


66 Seals of Doom on the Wall

by Adrenalineshots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Apocalypse, Gen, Multi, Telepathy, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-24
Updated: 2010-05-24
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:03:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 74,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adrenalineshots/pseuds/Adrenalineshots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There' something special about Dean. Something he forgot, something that Heaven wants him to remember. And there is something that Sam forgot, something that Hell wants him to never remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written at the beginning of Season 4, when most of what later became canon was still nothing but guesses in this story. Beta read by Jackfan2.

It started out simple enough. You know, the same way major car wrecks start simple. You have an itch on your leg, you lose two seconds deciding if you wanna scratch it or not and Bang! Thirty-car pile up.

So, you know, simple.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

He said that he would give Dean a weapon to help him in his task. Dean figured that Castiel, being an angel of the Lord and all that, would give him some arrows and a cute little pink bow.

He was wrong.

After having witnessed close up the various effects of Castiel's little two-fingers, hand-touching-forehead crap-trick, first with Bobby's nap and then with his own time-traveling, mind-screwing, let's-never-mention-it-again episode, it was understandable that Dean would expect pretty much anything when mister 'holy-tax-accountant' reached out both hands and touched one finger to each side of his head.

Nothing happen. There was no flash of white light, no waking up in some street bench in the middle of the Apocalypse, no bad-assed light saber, not even the ringing of Heaven's bells in his ears. Just a slight tingling on the balls of his feet, which could mean anything, from divine intervention to, you know, tight shoes.

Before Dean could wrap his mind around anything else, or even come to some sort of reasoning about all that had happen that night, Castiel was gone once more and Sam? He was getting in to the bitch's yellow car and driving away, leaving all the corpses behind them, like they were nothing… like they didn't even matter.

Dean knew that he should get his act together, race to his car and beat his brother back to the motel room. Dean knew that he should face Sam and ask him what the fuck he thought he was doing. Dean knew that he should DO something, but the only thing he could do was wrap his coat tight around his trembling body and take advantage of the dirty wall behind his back to guide his descend to the ground.

It hurt. It hurt deeply and in some place so deep inside him that he couldn't even name it anatomically. It hurt in his soul.

He knew that there had to be a reason, some sort of explanation. His heart warned him to get a grip, to stop listening to his mind. To ignore what he had just seen. But he couldn't.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

As soon as Castiel had brought him back from the past, the ugly past that he could not change, Dean had raced out of the motel's room and went to find Sam.

He arrived too late.

All around his baby brother, Dean could see dead bodies of at least five people. He had seen the other four fall, while the last one remained standing; a little girl of perhaps nine, maybe less. Her back was to Dean, her small face turned upward to the towering figure that was Sam, screaming at him to stop. Sam didn't.

First came the sound. It was this awful sound, this horribly familiar sound, like her insides were being ripped out and then she just fell to the ground in a boneless heap, silent.

Sam's hand remained raised for a few seconds more, a faint glow still emanating from his palm, a few sparkles of the light bulbs that had exploded around him still coloring the air with bright specks of white.

Sam didn't even blink an eye, his face impassive. No, not impassive. Dean could've dealt with impassive.

Proud. Sam looked proud as he gazed the bodies of the five people he had just… ended. Proud; like a job well done. Proud, in a way he'd never looked before, even when he killed the nastiest of beasts.

Before. Before Dean had died and gone to Hell. Before Dean found out that Azazel had tainted his brother.

The deed done, Sam just cleaned his hands on his jeans and walked over to the petite brunette who stood waiting for him, leaning casually against the yellow sports car. Even from afar, and despite the change of looks, Dean knew that he was looking at Ruby. This new Ruby, Dean realized, was the same bitch that his brother had in his hotel room when Dean had come back, the same bitch that his brother pretended not to know… The bitch that helped his brother access the powers that he had sworn never to tap into.

Sworn to Dean. And then crapped all over it.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Dean looked at his shaking hands, trying to wipe his head clean of what he had seen, trying to get that sound out of his ears. He closed his eyes, fighting the sense of dread that was becoming his permanent companion these days. The same sense of dread and deep fear that he felt whenever he looked in the mirror and saw his own terrified eyes and blood… so much blood.

His voice had made that same sound once, he was sure of that. He could not recall the exact circumstances, he could not pin point the exact place, but he had a pretty good idea of where it had happened and his throat… his throat remembered the exact feeling of screaming like that. Exactly like that. It left a nauseating blood aftertaste in his mouth.

Dean screamed again, just for the sake of it, just to get some control over his actions. It helped a little. Taking deep gulps of air, Dean tried getting to his feet. They held so he pushed himself up and walked towards his parked car.

It was time to go back to his brother. They had a lot to talk about and if Sam thought that Dean was just going to seat back and watch him… turn in to this, Sam was in for a big surprise.  
It was time for Dean to take back his place as older brother, it was time to stop feeling sorry for himself and face his task. It was time…

"… for you to learn what your bother is and what he can become," Castiel's deep voice came from inside the car.

Bending over, Dean looked inside, knowing that he would find the annoying angel lounging in the passenger seat. Sam's seat.

"Get out of my head," Dean growled. He threw open the door and got inside. "And get out of my car," he added as an after thought, turning the key in the ignition.

The familiar roar of his car's engine filled the air, the sound and the faint smell of gasoline drowning the little girl's scream and the smell of blood in his nostrils.

"There is something of great importance that you need to know, something that you wouldn't understand before you saw what you've seen tonight," Castiel went on, ignoring both Dean's words and the murderous glare in his eyes.

"What?" Dean clenched the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. "That bad deals are apparently genetic and that my brother spends his nights playing serial killer?"

"That your brother is one of the 66 seals."

000000000000000000000000000


	2. Chapter 2

  
Dean felt like that cartoon character, Wile E. Coyote, with an anvil crashing down on his head. He hit the brakes of the Impala before spinning in his seat and facing the impassive angel. “Come again?”

“Samuel is one of the se…” Castiel complied, not yet grasping the concept of rhetorical.

“66 seals. The same Lucifer-walks-free 66 seals?” Dean interrupted, a crazy urge to laugh building up in his chest. “Are you nuts? Does my ginormous brother look like some kind of stamp to you?”

“Not all seals are inanimate objects. Some are not even from this plain of existence. This one in particular becomes broken when a special kind of demon offers its own existence for the love of another, something that would ordinarily never come to happen.  You must stop your brother from fulfilling this.”

Dean was glad that he had stopped the car when he did, because THAT, right there, that would’ve sent him crashing against the nearest light post. “OK, fluffy-wings, listen to me very carefully because I’m only gonna say this once,” Dean started, his voice deep and menacing. “My brother is not a fucking demon, so you better start re-checking your memos because, buddy, they gave you the wrong ones!”

“I said that it is a special kind of demon. A hybrid, in this case, one that Azazel went to great lengths to create,” Castiel said, a touch of compassion in his voice. Despite his impatience for Dean to see the bigger picture, Castiel knew that this was a harsh truth to hear.  

After a beat, the angel continued, “You know that humans can become demons. The demon you know as Ruby told you this.” Castiel’s blue gaze seeming to pierce inside Dean’s head, but he patiently allowed his words to take root. “She was not lying on that account. Given enough time in Hell, any soul can be stripped of its Godly spark…”

“Get to the point,” Dean growled. The palms of his hands were getting sweaty and Bobby’s words about the condition of his own soul came back to haunt him again.  He was the one whose soul had taken a vacation down south. His brother was the one with faith in the Man above. Someone was doing this math all-wrong.

“Imagine that each drop of demon blood is equivalent to a century in Hell,” the angel said, once again not shy about the privacy of Dean’s thoughts.

The picture was as clear in his head as if Dean had been there to witness it himself. Baby Sam in his crib, innocent and trusting, a new comer to a fucked up world, giggling as that yellow-eyed bastard stood above him, force-feeding him his tainted blood, staining Sam’ soul forever.

The smell of blood assaulted Dean’ senses again and he swallowed his nausea down. “That doesn’t mean that Sam is some kind of de… it wasn’t his fault that son of a bitch chose our family to screw with!”

“No, it wasn’t. But some things were set in motion long before any Winchester was even born. Some things could not have been avoided, some had to be made sure to happen exactly like they happen, or all would be lost.”

Dean’s brain was running wild inside his head. Things were finally starting to make sense to him. “You son of a bitch!” He rasped, the implications of what he had just realized occluding everything else. “You did it on purpose!”

Castiel’s only reaction to Dean’s words had been a slight twitch in his ageless eyes, a micro second reveal of the ferocious warrior inside. Then, just as quickly, his face was emotionless again. “Yes, had you not been there, Samuel Campbell and his daughter Mary would have never known who Azazel would strike next, and yes, Azazel would have never caught sense of your mother.”  

“It’s my fault,” Dean whispered, grief as raw as dry sand building up inside his eyes. “Mom, dad, our grandparents… even Sam’s fate… it’s all my fault!”

Suddenly it was as if there wasn’t enough air inside the Impala, despite the open windows. Suddenly it was as if all that Dean could breathe was mud and his lungs were choking on it.  

Castiel’s hand on his felt strangely comforting and warm. “Had it not been Mary and John, Azazel would’ve picked another to bring Sam to life, and all would’ve been the same,” he explained. “You and your brother would’ve look differently, but your lives would be the same. It wasn’t your fault Dean, it was your destiny.”

Dean’s chuckle was half triggered by the ridiculous words coming out of the angel’s mouth; half by his lungs need for oxygen. “Destiny? Are you saying that my destiny was to screw my whole family up? That’s just awesome.”

“Some things only time will explain, Dean. Right now, we need you to keep an eye on your brother and make sure that, no matter what, he does not take his own life.”

Dean’s green eyes searched the angel’s face, looking for what wasn’t being said. Unable to find what he was looking for, the hunter let his eyes wander, gathering the strength to ask the question burning his throat. The idea alone was enough to close his throat up.

“Why would my brother feel the need to off himself?” He finally forced out.

Silence was his only reply. Castiel, in his over-dramatic self, had once more chosen that moment to ‘beam-out’ of the Impala, leaving Dean with a few answers and a heck of lot more questions.

“Fuck this. I need a drink.”

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The bar was so small that it barely earned the right to be called a bar. It was a slight step above lemonade stand.

The air conditioner, if it had ever worked, had conked out probably before Dean was even born, and the bluish cigarette smoke that gathered like a cloud on the ceiling, had probably been building up there since the same time.

As long as the beer was cold and of alcoholic persuasion, Dean didn’t really give a crap.

The sweat had started running down his back the minute he crossed the small path from the front door to the bartender’s domain, but even so he couldn’t bring himself to got through the motions of taking his jacket off.

“What will it be?” The raspy voice belonging to the old man behind the counter seemed to fit in the overall feeling of the place.

“Whatever you have on tap,” Dean answered, scanning the rest of the room. He wasn’t really looking for anything or anyone in particular, but some habits were hard to shake. Apart for three guys that looked like regulars and the couple in the back exchanging massive amounts of bodily fluids, the place was empty. Rough day for the business.

“Rough day?” The raspy voice returned, accompanying the slide of a beer bottle across the counter. Guess that even tap beer was too much of a modern day convenience for this place.

Dean looked up. At five feet two, and with a head completely covered in snow-white hair, the bartender’s comprehensive brown eyes ruled over an age-wrinkled face. Dean searched an answer; somehow the words ‘an angel told me that my brother is the bringer of the Apocalypse’ followed by ‘and I’m suppose to stop him’ seemed like the wrong thing to say.

“Rough year,” he said instead, taking a swing of his beer. He was pretty sure that that particular brand had been out of circulation for at least five years, but it was cold enough to smooth his raw throat.

_‘Wait ‘til you’re my age, then you’ll see rough. Each time I go to the bathroom it’s a guess to which color my piss will be,’_ the old man said as he busied himself in the back of the counter.

Dean hid his chuckle with another swallow. “I’m guessing yellow’s too boring for you?”

The old man turned to face his client, hands frozen in the middle of his lazy cleaning of a wet glass, his brows furrowed. “What are you talking about son?”

The bartender’s challenging gaze returned Dean’s confused stare. The elder Winchester swallowed, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry… I thought…” Great, just what he needed to end the day, offend the man in charge of getting him drunk. “… it’s just that you were talking about… it was a stupid joke. I’m sorry.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t said anything son,” the old man said, his gaze changing from comprehensive to unwelcoming. “Maybe you should just finish that beer and head out home.”

“Oh, come on…” Dean tried, adding a winning smile for effect. “That’s a bit of an over reaction, don’t cha think? It’s just piss man!”

It was the wrong combination. The old man looked mildly freaked. “Get out or I’ll call the cops!”

Deans smile vanished, replaced by an air of confusion. What the fuck…?

This time, when the words ‘stupid dumb drunk kid’ reached his ears, Dean was looking straight at the bartender. It never occurred to him to be offended or correct the man’s assumptions. It didn’t register that the crashing sound and the wet feeling in his pants’ leg was from the beer bottle that he’d just dropped. It didn’t even cross his mind that the beer in question hadn’t been paid for yet.

Dean just wanted to get away from that bar as fast as he could, naively holding out hope that the air outside would wipe away this last batch of craziness.

Because those words that should’ve offended him… the bartender had never opened his mouth to say them.  



	3. Chapter 3

When he finally made his way in to the motel room, Dean had managed to get his breathing mostly under control.

The journey from the bar to this place had been one of the longest in Dean’s life. He actually had no idea how he’d been able to make it without crashing his baby in to something heavy and unforgiving. Come to think of it, he would have to check the Impala for any dents in the morning.

Dean had no recollection of the past fifteen minutes. Everything was one big blur of denial and anger, of feeling strange and like a foreigner in his own skin.

He felt like a freak. He’d been turned into a damn freak!

Dean just wished that Castiel would show his angelic face right now, so that he could smash his angelic nose right in.

How dare he? What gave him the right? Were those God’s specific orders? ‘Go thee and screw Dean Winchester’s life in My name?’

Dean could feel his whole world spinning out of control. He searched the room for the one person that had always been his center of sanity.

Sam was sound asleep in the bed nearest to the bathroom, like usual, leaving the one by the window to his older brother. The faint streetlights, outside the shady place that they had chosen to spend the night, cast a pale yellow glow on the back of Sam’s head, making the dark brown look lighter than it actually was.

For a fleeting moment, Dean wanted nothing more than to wake his brother up and just talk. Talk about everything that had happen, talk about what he’d been through, find out what was going on with Sam… God help him, Dean even wanted to talk about his feelings because right now… right now he felt like he might explode if he didn’t do SOMETHING.

But he couldn’t. Talking would make it all real, permanent. Unchangeable.

Dean closed his eyes and leaned against the closed door. If he stood still for long enough, would he be able to hear his brother’s thoughts too? Or maybe if he walked slowly outside, would he be able to hear what other people were doing in the privacy of their rooms?

Except for the dog barking and the two cars that drove by on the freeway outside, Dean couldn’t hear a thing.

He wanted to believe that the ‘episode’ in the bar had been the fruit of over-tiredness, major freakiness and just normal reaction to one hell of a night. Dean wanted to believe that everything would be normal with his brother and that he hadn’t turned in to some sort of psycho in his absence.

If he woke Sam now, he would probably end up punching him in the face.  
   
Because despite everything else, the one thing that had surprised him the most, the one thing that was weighing his heart down and making it hard to breathe, was knowing that Sam had betrayed him with such ease, with so little regard for his wishes and promises.

Sam had stood there, looking Dean straight in the eyes just hours after their reunion, and LIED. He hadn’t even blinked, didn’t even paused to gather his thoughts and decide if he wanted to deceive the brother that had just came back from Hell or not. He’d just stood there and assured Dean that he’d respected his whishes because they’d been his dying ones.

Bullshit.

Dean yanked his buttoned-down shirt off and pulled his pants down, intent on sleeping over the matter and figure out what he would do in the morning. It was nearing dawn and he was sure that any decision taken at such an ungodly hour could only be a bad one.

Out of habit, he pulled the cheap covers down, only to change his mind and throw them back up and lay on top of the mostly made bed. Being cold helped him sleep better, and Dean needed to sleep tonight. He needed a clean slate and a fresh start in the morning, when everything looked less fucked up.

He managed to stay quiet for a grand total of fifteen minutes. Every time he closed his eyes Dean was presented with the after images of his mother’s eyes, slowly filling with tears as she realized that she had lost everything but John in the same night. As she realized that something horrible would happen in ten years just so she could have that brief time of happiness with the man she loved. The same sad eyes that, in their old house in Kansas, had looked at a grown-up Sam and apologized.

Despite Castiel’s reassurances, Dean couldn’t shake the feeling that he should be the one saying ‘I’m sorry.’

And if Dean managed to force his mother’s image out of his mind, Sam’s face, their expressions so similar, would replace her just as fast. Speeding images of Sam emptying a clip in Jake’s face; of Sam killing first and asking questions later; of Sam ready to sacrifice one life for the sake of a couple of others; of Sam ready to embrace his powers, in the odd chance that he would be able to save Dean from Hell.

And through it all, Castiel’s face; laughing maniacally at him, enjoying the show.

Dean punched his pillow and turned to the other side. There was a red neon sign somewhere outside that pulsed like throbbing blood, turning his vision blood-filled even when he closed his eyes.

Sam’s laptop was resting on top of the wooden table beneath the window, the only thing that served as piece of decoration in the dingy place. Next to the laptop, stashed carelessly beneath a paper bag filled with something greasy, was Sam’s journal, the one that Dean wasn’t even aware existed until Sam had whipped it out the other day to take some notes.

All pretence of going to sleep forgotten, Dean slowly got up, glad that the bed wasn’t a squeaker. His bare feet made no sound as he crossed the carpeted floor, grabbed the laptop and the journal and made his way to take a seat on the floor, as far away from Sam’s bed as possible.

Making sure that the light from the computer screen wouldn’t disturb Sam, Dean opened it and started the search engine.

Searching for the 66 seals proved pointless. It was a reference too obscure for the usual sites and apart from certain libraries and Bobby’s private stash, Dean doubted that he would find much.

Briefly, he entertained the idea of surfing a little porn, seeing what was new after his four months away, but to be honest with himself, he wasn’t in the mood. The magazine he had robbed from the store near his gra… near the crossroads had remained untouched inside the bag and eventually forgotten at Bobby’s place.

He looked at his brother’s journal again. Dean knew that his curiosity over what Sam had been up to all this time would eventually get the better of him. That was, after all, why he’d grabbed the book in the first place. But now that all that stood between curiosity and spying was a closed cover, Dean wasn’t so sure he wanted to break Sam’s trust.

Telling himself that, if Sam had anything to hide, he wouldn’t have kept his journal in plain sight, Dean opened the dog-eared book. Taking advantage of the light coming from the computer screen, Dean flipped through the pages that described his brother’s life throughout the four months that he’d been alone.

It read like a hit man’s list.

For almost every town that his brother had been to, Dean could find at least two killings, sometimes three at the same time. Sam’s journal registered everyone of them as a different demon, naming the list of clues that had led Sam to it, small notations of visual links and intensities made on the side, followed by a serious of numbers that Dean couldn’t quite figure. The numbers were always matched by series of two, the first one always smaller than ten, the second one always ten. It looked like some kind of score points.

Dean looked at his brother, too long hair spread all over a too flat pillow, nose buried in to the once white fabric, right hand clenching the edge of his sheets, the other lost beneath the covers.

A bright white flash exploded behind Dean’s eyes and he gasped in surprise. For a moment, instead of the dark room with peeling green paint, he could see another one, with an equally bad paint job, only in yellow.

Closing the journal and quickly getting up, Dean blinked hard and took a deep breath. Sam hadn’t seemed to notice either the light or Dean’s reaction, just sighing in contentment and turning to his other side.

A second flash and Dean had to grab the wall behind him to stop himself from taking a nosedive. There was a portrait of an old Mexican couple above the bed and the picture seemed to enlarge and shrink in time with the rocking motion beneath his knees.

Only it wasn’t his knees, or his hands that he could see caressing some girl’s breasts.

Dean could feel bile rising up in his throat and he raced to the bathroom, closing the door and keeping the lights out.

A third flash brightened the dark place, but instead of a bathtub and toilet, he could see the owner of the previous breasts, a brunette, rocking in tempo with him, wild hair and ecstasy closed eyes, teeth biting her lips to keep her from screaming. “Sam,” she whimpered.

When she opened her eyes, all he could see was black.

With no time and no trust in his ability to find the toilet in the windowless dark room, Dean threw up in the general direction of the sink. He figured that with dinner being a non-event and lunch such a distant event, the damaged couldn’t be that big.

What the hell had that been about?

He recognized the brunette, but not like THAT. He’d seen her with Sam when he’d first returned and tonight again, playing chauffeur to his brother’s nightly activities.

Ruby.

If he’d been asleep, he would’ve just assumed that this had been some kind of perverse, wet nightmare. He had never been attracted to demons and the fact that the bodies they used weren’t even theirs, only added insult to a very large injury.

But he couldn’t ignore the fact that he was wide-awake and that it hadn’t been his name escaping the demon’s mouth, it had been his brother’s.

Dean palmed around, searching for the faucet and opened what he hoped to be the cold-water tap. The sound of running water and the wet feeling washing through his fingers came seconds after.

Wet handed, the hunter ran his fingers through his hair. If these images weren’t part of his memories and were certainly not part of his fantasies, were they Sam’s?

The answer was almost certainly yes. The real question now being if what was happening in them was just a hormone-induced fantasy or Sam’s memory of a real event. The thought brought a new surge of bile to Dean’s mouth.

“What are you doing here in the dark?” Sam’s voice sounded at the same time that the whole bathroom exploded in to light. “Are you ok?”

Dean flinched back from the light, his eyes not prepared for such a drastic change.

He blinked at his brother, black dots of residual shock dancing around Sam’s figure. His mouth was all of a sudden really dry.

This was it.

A question as simple as ‘Are you ok?’ and depending on his answer, Dean knew that their lives could take two completely different roads.

If he told Sam the real reason for him losing his lunch all over the sink it would be: one- embarrassing as hell; and two- force him to confess that he was now a freak that could spy on other people’s thoughts. This would undoubtedly lead to telling Sam what Castiel had done to him and in turn everything else, like the fact that, on account of him being one of the 66 locks on damn Lucifer, an angel of the Lord had offered – threatened –  to actually smite Sam, if Dean didn’t step up to the plate.

For a guy that actually had some faith in the Man upstairs, that couldn’t be nice for Sam to hear.

Or Dean could lie.

It wasn’t as if Sam hadn’t lied right back at him. Dean could bide his time, see for himself what Sam had been getting himself in to, cross-check some facts, hunt that bitch Ruby down and end her existence once and for all, get some straight answers out of Castiel.

“Dean?” Sam asked, concerned filling his face as he reach a hand out to grab his brother’ shoulder.

Dean managed to hide the pain from his face as his brother’s fingers brushed over Castiel’s handprint. “I’m fine, Sam,” he whispered. “It was just a bad dream.”  



	4. Chapter 4

"&gt;“So," Sam started, sounding unsure of what to say, as he leaned against the doorframe. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

Dean felt tempted to make up some crap about the dream being about his time in Hell. But he couldn't. It was like playing chicken with a ten-ton speeding truck. He still doesn't remember what it was like downstairs and he would fight with all that is in him to keep it that way.   


So, he doesn't use the easy way out, the 'poor traumatized brother' card. And it would work too, Dean knows because now that he's paying attention, he can hear Sam's voice inside his head saying things like ‘_please be ok’_, and ‘_please say you don’t remember any of it’_, and ‘_God, I can’t deal with this right now’_.   


Between the after-images of what he just 'spied', and all the mixed feelings of helplessness and concern emanating from Sam, Dean's feeling more than a little trapped inside the small bathroom.   


The smell of sickness in the air isn't helping either.   


Sam doesn’t notice the lost look on his brother’s face because Dean turns around before it’s too late and busies himself washing his face and chasing the remains of his puke down the drain.   


“I think we should go to Bobby’s,” Dean says instead, the idea coming to him out of nowhere. Suddenly, he knows that that's exactly where they have to go. “See if he came up with something.”   


Dean is not yet sure if he wants to reveal any of his newly acquired ‘skills’ to Bobby - the man is, after all, a hunter - but he really has no choice. He needs to borrow some of Bobby’s books if he wants any shot at understanding what’s going on.   


When the phone starts ringing, Dean can feel his stomach turn again and cold sweat just breaks on his skin.   


Somehow, he knows it’s Bobby on the other end, asking them to come. Somehow, he knows it’s urgent and it’s something about the seals.   


The insane sense that Sam is going to, somehow, connect Bobby’s call with Dean's suggestion is suddenly terrifying in and of itself.   


He almost misses it when Sam tells him that he must have a crystal ball or something, because that was Bobby, asking them to go to his place as fast as the could get there.   


0o0o0o0o0o0o0o   


The two hours it takes for Sam to finally fall asleep are two of the most awkward hours Dean can remember spending inside the car with his brother.   


They would have their silent moments on occasion because it was impossible not to have them unless you were anything but a parrot. But they had been comfortable silences before, the ‘I really have nothing to say, but if something comes up, you’ll be the first one to know’ silences, the silences that could be broken with a bad song blasting through the radio, or the right story that wouldn't be too awkward for Dean to tell and still be sure of being embarrassing as hell to Sam.   


This time, Dean was just glad that Sam had fallen asleep.   


His own eyelids were getting heavy. It had been a very restless night for both of them. It was also shaping up to be a very restless day too.   


Ever since Sam had awoken, Dean had been trying really hard to avoid hearing his brother’s thoughts. Given that he hadn’t the slightest idea as to how he’d done it in the first place, not doing it again was proving to be very taxing.   


Still, if Sam thought ‘too hard’, or if Dean allowed himself to relax, the occasional stray, unspoken word or image would drift across from his little brother. Dean knew he had to remain vigilant and on his guard and while it worked, it also added to the exhaustion of a sleepless night.   


Sam sang a lot in his mind. That helped a bit, even if his brother's taste in music sucked.   


It was certainly better than the chick-flick moments that Sam kept having in the privacy of his mind. All those times when Dean had been able to ignore his brother's puppy dog eyes and the looks of concern and sour milk (that seemed particularly sharp when directed at him), those... those were gone now.   


There was no escape possible because even if Dean walked away, the lingering remains of Sam's emotions and disjointed sentences would still chase after him.   


_ 'He's not sleeping enough, I can tell from his eyes.' _ _   
_

_ 'Yuck... was that a fart?' _ _   
_

_ 'What will I do if he remembers everything?' _ _   
_

_ 'Should I help him remember?' _ _   
_

_ 'Should I help him forget?' _ _   
_

_ 'What if Lilith catches him again?' _   


When he wasn't remembering some emo-song, Sam worried a lot.   


But it was the occasional doubt and question that would sometimes cross Sam's mind and catch them both by surprise that brought Dean some hope. Hope that Castiel had been wrong or at least, severely over-reacting. After all, the angel had already proven to be a bit 'clumsy' in his interactions with Humans. Pamela probably had another word for it...   


What truly mattered was that Sam kept questioning the pros and cons of using his demonic powers to defeat demons. To Dean, this was a positive thing; it meant there was a very good chance that he’d be able to convince Sam to stop it all together. Or, better yet, a chance of Sam realizing the danger he was in and quit on his own.   


Despite having slept more than he had during the night, Dean could still feel how tired Sam was. Living a double life wasn't easy on anyone, and Sam was no exception.   


At least now he wasn't thinking so loud and his dreams... the fast and disorganized images that sometimes wiggled their way into Dean's mind, were harmless and peaceful. They were, however, in conjunction with the silence inside the car, doing wonders for his own tiredness and diminishing ability to keep his eyes open.   


Caffeine. That's what he needed.   


Spotting a sign that announced a rest stop two miles ahead, Dean stepped on the gas pedal and turned the right blinker on. He could already smell the crappy coffee and that was exactly what he needed.   


The day was uncharacteristically warm and, despite their nearness to the free way, the air was surprisingly fresh. Dean stretched his back and drew a lung-full of the coffee-sprinkled air. God, he had missed this!   


Taking off his leather jacket he carefully threw it on the back seat, and leaving the car door open so as not to wake Sam, Dean carefully exited the car. Preparing to walk away, Dean stopped and glanced back; with a sad smile, he noted how peaceful Sam looked with his head bend sideways to reach the seat’s leather. It was stupid, but it reminded Dean of a younger Sam, a kid Sam, a safer Sam.   


The bell above the door chimed merrily as Dean entered the rundown roadside store, one more to add to their always growing list of rundown roadside stores. One of the lights above the half-empty shelves blinked wildly, turning the naked bulb in to something straight out of bad disco.   


The place looked empty and for a minute Dean entertained the idea of just helping himself and leaving.   


As if a silent alarm for evil intentions had gone off somewhere, a young kid came out from the door marked as 'office' and posted himself behind the counter with an almost silent 'howdy' towards Dean.   


Evil intentions abandoned for the moment, Dean looked around for something resembling food that hadn't passed its expiration date or hadn't been 'dated' by the squadron of flies cruising around the store's air space.   


They’d been up and driving since before dawn and Sam was bound to be hungry when he woke up. Looking at the meager offer of products on the stands, Dean grabbed a pack of candies.   


‘_Sweet Jesus... that is one fine ass!’_   


Dean smirked and looked around, searching for the owner of the voice. He liked to be the one to make the first move, but a lady who knew what she wanted worked just fine for him.   


The place looked as empty as before, except for the pimped faced teen guy behind the counter, pretending to read a sports magazine. Dean’s smirk turned to confusion as he gazed around the store.   


_ ‘Oh, wow! The other side is even better! I could eat those lips with a spoon!’ _   


Understanding dawned, smacking into him with all the finesse of a runaway cargo train. At the realization, Dean nearly dropped the coins in his hand but just managed to grip them tight. Crap.   


Now that he was looking at the pimped faced kid, not only sentences but bits of images were being jammed inside his head. The mind of a horny teenager… not a nice place for a tour.   


Dean could feel the heat rising in his face when he finally approached the counter and turned to face the attempted flirting smirk on the kid’s face.   


_ “ _ Can I get you anything else?”__ _   
_

_ ‘An oil rub?’ _ _   
_

_ ‘A hand out of your clothes?’ _ _   
_

_ 'Handjob?' _ _   
_

_ ‘Blowjob?’ _ _   
_

_ 'A job here so that I can ogle you more often?' _   


Dean nearly gasped at the speed with which his brain was being bombarded with teenage hormones and R-rated images.   


“NO!” It came out as a squeak. “I mean, no, that’s all,” Dean managed to say in a more controlled voice, handing over the pack of M&amp;M’s and bag of Doritos.   


“Shame really… you look like you could use a little down time,” the boy offered, his mind once again picturing what sort of _down time_ he was talking about.   


If possible, Dean’s face grew even redder as he made a hasty retreat back to the Impala. The bang of the car’s door closing reminded him why he’d left the door semi-opened. And meeting Sam’s sleepy eyes reminded him that, in the end, he hadn’t even gotten his coffee.   


“Damn!”   


“Is everyt... Dean, are you blushing?” Sam asked with a barely restrained chuckle.   


“No,” Dean answered, his voice lacking conviction and his eyes refusing to meet Sam’s. “Let’s just get out of here. Bobby’s waiting.”   


Sam couldn’t help but to look back, wandering just what had happened inside the tiny store to make Dean react like that. Through the store’s window, the image of a kid, maybe twenty if that much, waiving goodbye with a horny smile on his face was enough to clue Sam in.   


“OhMyG...”   


“Oh! Shut up,” Dean said without bite. He was going to kill Castiel.

0o0o0o0oo0o0o0o00o0o

Bobby was waiting outside when Dean turned off the engine and stepped out of the car.   


“About damn time! You girls stop to get a perm on your way in or what?”   


“Good to see you too Bobby,” Sam replied, unfolding his tall frame from inside the car. His knees popped and he stretched his back with a pained look on his face.   


_ ‘Goddamn! Them boys look like crap warmed over’ _   


“Hi Bobby,” Dean offered with a guilty smile. If he had thought it bad to be forced in to Sam’s head, it was almost worse to pick around in Bobby’s without the old man’s knowledge or approval. It tasted like betrayal.   


“Let’s go inside. I got fresh coffee,” Bobby said, hiding the concern in his face by turning his back on them and walking inside his house.   


_ ‘Idiot kids! Wasting away their health… like that ever helped!’ _   


Dean could barely keep up a straight face when that particular thought hit him. Who would’ve thunk that, despite his hard face and relaxed demeanor, Robert Singer, scrap-metal collector and hunter extraordinaire, was a mother hen?   


Following Bobby slowly into the house, Dean got an earful. There was the occasional thought of how thin Sam looked, or how dark the bags were hanging under Dean’s eyes, or the way their faces looked too pale kept leaping around, all from the older hunter’s head directly to Dean’s mind.   


The  Winchester men had always known that they had a special place in Bobby’s heart, even those threatened with buckshot rounds. Still, it was sweet to feel it first hand and unguarded like this.   


Because Dean could feel it, physically feel it, like a warm blanket of concern and care wrapping itself around his and Sam’s shoulders, in such a way that felt almost like home. But with the feeling of being taken care of, came the desire to just relax, and allow it. But Dean wouldn’t allow it as it was a dangerous mood to fall in to. Particularly now.   


The coffee ended up being cold beers and fried chicken that was still steaming when they opened the hard paper top and...   


“Is that pie?” Dean asked, knife already in hand, helping himself of a huge piece of the apple delicacy. The world might still be turned upside down, but apple pie, it seemed, worked better than miracles to solve everything.   


Or, almost everything. Bobby had grown serious over their casual talk and hungry bites. Now that he’d done his part in putting some weight on Sam’s bones and a happy grin on Dean’s face, Bobby was itching to get back to business. His quiet eagerness almost ruined the taste of sweet pie in Dean’s mouth.   


“So,” Dean said between bites, “what you got for us?”

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Bobby was all business after that. Apparently he had friends in very high places and one of them had given him the head’s up on something that had been happening. Something big.   


“In the  Vatican , really?” Dean asked, barely lifting his eyes from the papers that Bobby had given them.   


A collection of newspapers in both English and a couple of other languages were scattered all across Bobby’s kitchen table. Highlights in different colors pointed out the several events worldwide that had caught the older hunter’s attention.   


“Why on Earth would Lilith feel the need to destroy St. Peter’s Basilica?” Dean asked, his brow furrowed as he studied the different clippings.   


“The attack wasn’t on the Basilica itself.” Bobby clarified. “It was on the catacombs beneath it, more precisely, St. Peter’s tomb.”   


“So what?” Dean put in next. “Lilith had an old bone to pick with the old man, is that it?”   


“You know the story that Pastor Jim used to tell us, about the Guardian of the keys to Heaven?” Sam offered, marking the page of the book he was reading from with his index finger. “Apparently St. Peter was guarding more than those keys.”   


The minute Bobby’s mind turned to the matter at hand, Dean realized that this was all about Lilith and her damn pursuit of the 66 seals. The idea had been clear and loud in the older man’s head, just like the whole hundred other theories, suspicions and connections that Bobby had running around inside his brain. Boy, that man’s thinking process was a scary thing.   


Dean felt like a prick as he carefully planned the amount of time he would usually take to reach the same conclusion on his own. He molded the appropriate look on to his face and reacted now, as he wanted to react a good ten minutes ago.   


“Fuck it... St. Peter’s remains were one of the 66 seals, weren’t they?”   


Not a single sign of alarm or suspicion over his choreographed reaction. He would pat himself on the back if he didn’t feel so low for deceiving the closest people he had on the world like that.   


“His left hand, apparently,” Sam specified.   


“She’s been busy, I’ll give you that,” Bobby confirmed their reasoning. “And it wasn’t that one alone. Notre Dame, in  Paris , was attacked too.”   


“Another seal?”   


“Not sure,” Bobby said. “Some seals are pretty much straight forward, others are a bit more enigmatic. But I’m sure it’s all connected.”   


“Why?”   


“Well, for one there’s the trail of sulphur and dead bodies that she’s left behind,” Bobby explained, scratching his beard. “And then there’s the attack in itself… too similar.”   


“Whose remains were there?” Sam asked.   


“It wasn’t the remains that were important, it was the sculptor of the tomb, some eighteenth century guy named Pigalle. I checked with other places that had his stuff in them.  Ohio ,  Indiana ,  San Francisco ,  New York ... all of them had their Pigalle’s vandalized, but the one she was looking for was inside the chapel in  Paris ,” Bobby explained.   


“What was so special about that particular sculpture?”   


“It’s of a man getting out of his tomb, escaping the clutches of Death,” Bobby said, his eyes trying to escape Dean’s. “The lid of the coffin is open, held up by an angel.”   


_ ‘Just like you boy’ _   


Even if Dean hadn’t heard the words in his mind, he could’ve easily read them in the older man’s eyes.   


“And you think that this could have something to do with what happened to Dean?” Sam asked the question that was burning Dean and Bobby’s mind.   


“Well, there’s no indication that Pigalle’s had anything to do with the 66 seals, so I see no reason for Lilith to be so hell-bent in destroying that particular piece.”   


“It’s an old tomb guys... people put the freakiest sculptures on top of those things in the old days,” Dean dismissed the thought, not liking the emotions that he was getting from both his brother and Bobby.   


And now both Sam and Bobby are thinking so damn loud that Dean had to resist the urge to close his eyes and scream at them to shut up.   


_ ‘How can he not see it?’ _ _   
_

_ ‘Is he trying to be that thick?’ _ _   
_

_ ‘I shouldn’t’ve called them for this… it’s still too soon.’ _ _   
_

_ ‘Why hasn’t Ruby told me about any of this?’ _   


“Ok, you know what?” Dean growled out, getting up from his place on the table. His head felt like it might explode at any minute. “It was a really sucky night and I need my beauty sleep. So, why don’t you two figure all of that out and give the Reader’s Digest condensed version when I wake up?”   


_ ‘He must be exhausted to say something like that.’ _   


_ ‘Always running from research… it doesn’t bite you know?’ _ _   
_

_ ‘The lack of sleep would explain the bags under his eyes…’ _ _   
_

_ ‘I really need to pee…’ _   


Dean didn’t wait for their twin-confused looks to translate into any sort of words. Spoken words, that is. God, he hoped that distance would somehow diminish the freakiness in his head.   


_ ‘I can’t delay this any longer… they have to know.’ _   


Dean paused midway through the door, just a fraction of a second sooner than Bobby’s planned clear of throat.   


“There’s something else you need to know,” Bobby said.   


Dean sunk back in to his seat. Not that…   


“What is it Bobby?” Sam asked, twisting in his chair.   


“That demon virus that you boys stumbled on in Rivergrove?”   


“The one I was immune to?” Sam asked, his face a little paler than it was before. He could still remember like it had been yesterday. A whole town empty of its inhabitants, all turned in to some kind of murder-zombies-on-steroids. He had hoped that he would never have to face that again.   


“Lilith plans to use it to break one more seal and unleash pestilence on the world,” Bobby’s grim tone announced.


	5. Chapter 5

Someone was screaming.

At least he thought it was someone, because the scream sounded like words even though the tone was barely human.   


Sounded more like a dog. A beat up dog.   


What was a dog doing in that place? It didn’t seem like a place for a dog. Not that he could see much. It was too dark… dogs like it bright and shiny. Maybe a wolf?   


It smelled wrong too. Something metallic that clung in the air and clotted over the nose. A metallic, copper tang that got stuck to the top of his mouth and tasted a lot like…   


Blood. There was blood everywhere.

He could feel it pouring down his arms and legs. Hotter than the stuffed air that burned his lungs whenever he tried to breathe.   


The screaming became muffled, more like a whimper; a pathetic desire to make some kind of sound, just to prove it was still there. A claim for existence. Barely.   


He could hear other things now. Chains clanking, a gentle sound that turned the grading of metal links on one another in to some sort of caress. A soft chiming sound that reminded him of the wind blowing through a dream catcher.   


Only here there was no wind.   


In here there were no dreams.   


He could hear laughter as well. Now that the screams had almost died down he could hear the laugher behind the pain. It was a sickening sound, a disturbingly sad satire of a joyful sound, a high-pitched laugh, like a hyena’s cackle.   


Wolves and hyenas.   


It came as no surprise when the first set of teeth penetrated his flesh. And the claws… there were always claws, ready to tear him apart.   


In the darkness, he could not see their pointy talons, nor could he see those to whom they belonged, but he could tell the exact path that each and every one of those claws traveled in his eviscerated skin. Inch by painful inch.   


The first one had started just bellow his shoulder blade, gently cutting down his skin all the way to his waist, a tender gesture of precision that seemed odd given the shear amount of pain that it was generating.   


_ Stop. _   


He could understand the words being screamed now. He could recognize the pleading voice. It sounded pathetic. Defeated.   


_ Please stop. _   


The second claw drew a symmetrical path down his other shoulder blade, twin rivers of blood running down his back, cursing through the riverbeds that the muscles of his outstretched arms formed.   


_ Please… I can’t take it anymore. _   


The owners of the claws just kept on laughing, a caustic sound that burned his ears and filled him with shame … sadism oozed from the high pitched notes, like long fingernails on a dusty chalk-board. On and on and on and on…   


_ Please, just… just stop. _   


When the laughter stopped, he knew what would happen. They had played this game before and the end was always the same. He thought he’d died the first time it had happen, only to be brought back to face it all again.   


How many times it happened before, he did not remember, but one thing he was certain of, this would not be the last time.   


The claws were almost at the end of their path, the pattern design almost complete. He closed his eyes and waited for the words, the signal to free his most primal scream.   


A presence drew near his ear, air, fetid and warm, brushing against his sweaty skin. In its wake, goose bumps raising, evidence of pure revulsion.   


_ There… I gave you your wings back. _   


The words were whispered against him, a touch of tongue mingling with the venom being poured, a distraction for when the claws started to pull.   


_ Now fly, my angel… fly once again. _   


And Dean started screaming.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o00o

The conversation with Bobby had lasted well in to the night. Lilith was striking full force and the hunters had no other choice but to divide their forces and try their best to at least stall her plans.   


“I knew that one would come back to bite us all in our collective asses,” Dean growled, nursing his third coup of coffee in a row.   


“I don’t get it,” Sam started, scratching his head. “We had figured that the demon virus was one of Azazel’s hat tricks. Why is Lilith using it?”   


Bobby shrugged. “Hell if I know. Maybe she inherited it, like she did with all the souls the Cross Roads demon had been gathering. What I do know is that what Susan told me ain’t a coincidence.”   


And that was the part that the older hunter had already shared with the Winchesters. And the terrifying consequences of Lilith’s plans where chill-inducing.   


An old friend of Bobby’s, a doctor working at  Mercy Hospital in  New York , had stumbled across a demon by pure chance, catching it as it was coming out from the blood donation floor. Truth was, Susan wouldn’t even know that the harmless looking man that she’d bumped in to outside the elevator was a demon if he hadn’t reacted to the blessed golden cross that she always wore around her neck.   


Being acquainted with Bobby’s line of work, having crossed paths a few years before, Susan knew a little about the supernatural world and its creatures. She knew enough to realize that the flinch she had seen had nothing to do with the man’s blood sucking tendencies and a lot to do with him having an unwanted passenger of the smoky type.   


Susan had played it cool then, not wanting to raise the demon’ suspicions. She knew they existed. She hadn’t gone so far as to ask Bobby how to fight them. As soon as the demon was gone, Susan had rushed in to the blood bank and asked to perform a special test on all the blood that had been donated that day. She found a total of five samples with the same type of sulphur-based virus that Bobby had alerted her of a couple of months before. And then she called Bobby.   


“It’s actually smart, if you think about it,” Bobby mumbled, gathering some of the papers that they had already searched for. “Blood gets tested for a lot of things before being redistributed, but sulphur ain’t one of them. A single sample hits the national bank, and Lilith can easily infect more than one town.”   


“That’s just fucked up… we have no idea how long Lilith’s been distributing her samples all over the country. Hell! All over the world!” Dean vent out, throwing the rest of his lukewarm coffee in to the sink. The excess caffeine was starting to feel like tiny ants beneath his skin. “For all we know, millions could be infected already!”   


“I know,” Bobby agreed. His face looked older than before, his shoulders hunched under the weight of what he knew and the recognition that there wasn’t much that he could do. “Susan sounded the alarm amidst the medical community. She didn’t exactly call it demonic virus, but she alerted the proper authorities about the presence of an unknown substance in her hospital’s blood supply. A national wide search is being made on all banks as we speak. I can only hope that they find all the contaminated samples in time.”   


“And outside the  US ?” Sam asked.   


“We’re calling everyone that we know. Tamara, you remember her? She had quite a few contacts of hunters in  Europe .”   


“That’s not gonna be enough,” Dean put to words the sentiment he knew the others shared with him.   


“And how do we stop her?”   


And that had been the big question, the one that had sent Dean to Bobby’s library because the competition between his thoughts and the depressing ones that he kept catching from both his younger brother and the older hunter were giving him the mother of all headaches.   


He hadn’t planned to fall asleep. There was no time for that… even if his eyes were begging him to just get closed for a second.   


Until they could come up with a plan to stop Lilith there really wasn’t much any of them could do. Eventually Sam and Bobby would reach that conclusion as well and go to bed. Dean hoped that, in the meantime, he could get a few hours to himself and search Bobby’s books about the 66 seals and demon hybrids.   


After thumbing through a few books, he did manage to found a couple of references to human-demon hybrids, however, most of them implied some sort of physical ah… intercourse. There was the Succubus and the Incubus, the Cecaelias (octopus, almost mermaid like perverts), Empusas (demigoddess), Hone-onnas (Japanese sex-crazed demons) and, of course, Lilith, literally the mother of all those bitches.   


The closest he could find to even resemble Azazel were the Lidércs. Those were Hungarian demons that would turn in to fire and bring doom to the houses they visited.   


But nowhere could he find mention of demons feeding their blood to children.   


The seal that Castiel had mentioned, that one Dean did manage to find. Reading again the same words that the angel had already mentioned to him was every bit as hard as the first time. Only now it was easier to convince himself that Sam could not be this hybrid that they talked about. And, even if he were, it was up to Dean to help his brother to hold tight to his humanity and stop Sam from turning evil.   


Because that was the only way to prevent the breaking of the seal. Once he turned dark, what could Dean really do? Why would an evil being take its own life? Would Sam even consider that?   


The answer to his second question came easily to Dean. Sam would die for a lot of reasons, strong reasons in which he believed hard enough to sacrifice himself.   


Out of revenge for Jessica’s death, finding the yellow-eyed demon had been one. Getting Dean out of his deal had been another. Refusing to kill one of the physic kids had actually cost him his own life. So yeah, there were a lot of things for which Sam was willing to die for. And Dean was still his greatest weakness.   


He was still skimming through the yellowing pages of an old book with particularly graphic depictions of Lucifer’s war on Heaven, remembering the pained look in Castiel’s eyes when he told him about his lost brothers, when his brain gave up on Dean’s good sense and dragged him down to sleep.

  


0o0o0oo0o0o00o0

  


“Dean!”   


“Dean! Wake up!”   


The image of a big hand clashing with his cheek brought Dean back to the land of the conscious with a start.   


“Stop!” Dean whispered, not sure if he was saying it to the after images of his nightmare or Sam’s hand, ready to strike.   


Dean came fully awake then, snapping upright in his chair suddenly. The looming faces of his brother and Bobby’s figure took a step back, identical concerned and confused looks in both their faces.   


“You back with us now?” The older hunter asked, noticing the unfocussed way in which Dean’s green eyes kept jumping from one spot to another, like he was searching for something.   


Dean didn’t answer, instead, he chose to sit straighter in his chair to stop himself from falling down.   


For a fleeting moment, all that he could see was darkness and hanging chains. He could still feel the ghost pain of claws on his skin, the dizzying sensation of floating in the air making his stomach turn and bile rise to his mouth.   


Dean grabbed the edge of the table tightly, willing the room to stop spinning.   


The book he’d been reading was still open on the page that had lulled him to sleep. Eyes drawn down, he gazed again at the black and white drawing of a man, naked, being torn apart by a horde of angry demons, and that was it. The last remains of his restraint fly out the window and Dean races to the bathroom, acid burning his throat. He was sure Bobby liked his books better without semi-digested fried chicken all over them.   


“Dean… are you ok?” Sam’s voice drifts through the closed door. Next to him, Dean could hear Bobby whispering and finally the sound of two pairs of feet walking away.   


Good ol’Bobby, understanding that he needed his space because, right now, he was so not ok.   


Dean turned on the cold tap and splashed water over his face. His body felt clammy and dirty, like he hadn’t taken a bath in over a month. He turned around, knowing perfectly well that Bobby’s bathroom downstairs didn’t have a bathtub. Gritty as he felt, Dean couldn’t gather the strength to walk the distance between this bathroom and the one upstairs. Not if he had to face Sam and Bobby in between.   


Not if he had to look in their faces and explain that he was starting to remember his time in Hell.   


Why the fuck did he had to remember _that_ now?   


“Because we need you to.”   


This time, the voice hadn’t sounded inside his head. Dean looked up at the mirror in front of him and found that his reflection was no longer alone.   


“Castiel,” Dean growled, his hands fisting, eager to make contact with the angel’s face. The only thing stopping the angry hunter from punching all that serenity off of Castiel’s face was some deep engraved sense of blasphemy that pastor Jim had managed to imprint somewhere in his teenaged subconscious mind and the still too vivid images of his nightmare. “I don’t want any of it… I want it all back as it was.”   


It was a demand and Dean knew that he really couldn’t force the angel to do anything. But if free choice had any saying in the matter, he freaking was using his right now. Take away the memories of Hell and take away this damn telepathy crap, he didn’t want any of it.   


“I can not take away that which was not mine to give,” Castiel answered his unasked questions.   


“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”   


Castiel sighed, his head tilting slightly to the left as if pondering how much to say next.   


“It means that this is what you are now and you must learn to deal with all the pieces of you,” he ended up saying.   


Another cryptic answer to answer an even more cryptic sentence… both of which meant nothing to Dean other than what he’d already figured. Because deep down, he knew. Deep down, Dean knew that a whole life of keeping his wishes and hopes in second plan had to come with some deeper meaning, some hidden design. As a soldier, he’d been groomed to have no free will. He was sick of it!   


Castiel’s hand rested above the mark on Dean’s shoulder, a perfect juxtaposition of fingers and warmth.   


“I’ll be here to help you,” the angel assured him, the words seeming to weight more than their meaning, a fresh balsam chasing away Dean’s fears.   


Feeling sort of numb, his body weightless, Dean slumped against the cold sink. “I’m not ready for this,” he managed to whisper. “I don’t know what to do.”   


Before darkness descended, the last words on Dean’s mind were Castiel’s. _‘I’ll show you’._

0o0o0o0o00o0o0o

“Damn it Dean!” Bobby’s angry tone pierced through the fog like a blaring horn.   


Dean could feel a warm body behind his head and two hands under his arms. Another set of hands held his calves, which didn’t made much sense until he felt a sofa under his ass.   


“What the hell happened?”   


Sam this time, sounding as angry as Bobby. He was kneeling beside the sofa, two fingers prying open first one then Dean’s other eye. Satisfied that the pupils seemed equal, Sam moved his hand to Dean’s forehead. Oddly, the less he found wrong with his brother, the more Sam seemed to grow concern.   


“Are you ok?” Sam asked, not waiting for Dean’s answer before adding, “and don’t feed me that crap about being ok, ‘cause dude, you’re not ok! Ok?”   


“Ok,” Dean whispered, pressing two fingers against his eyes to clear his watery vision. “I need a piece of paper.”   


“What for?” Bobby asked, his hands already skimming through his messy desk looking for something to write with.   


“Because Castiel just showed me where Lilith is and I want it on paper before it goes away.”


	6. Chapter 6

“So, it wasn’t a vision?” Sam's skeptical tone only added to the annoyance of the number of times he’d already asked the same question. “But you saw where Lilith was,” Sam went on, ignoring the tension on his brother’ shoulders. “How is _that _not a vision?”

Dean ignored him for the fifth time in a row. He didn’t know what to call it. The only thing he did know was that one moment he was inside Bobby’s tiny bathroom and the next he was in some dark alley, watching Lilith, inside the body of some poor six year old, going inside some half-decaying building with her minions. A lot of them.

The only points of reference he had were the buildings and shops that he could see in the main street to his left, but even those were fleeing his mind even as Dean scribbled furiously on the white paper. Castiel’s little glimpse had only lasted a few seconds and Dean had spent the majority of those cringing.

He had no idea if what he’d seen was happening now or would be happening in the future. It had already happened in the past, of that Dean was sure, because Castiel had showed him exactly how the demons produced the demonic virus… and now that he’d seen it, Dean would make sure that it wouldn’t be made ever again.

A door, at the back of the alley where he’d stood, opened; the interior darker than the gloomy outside. Even though he was not physically there, Dean could feel the blood in his veins automatically turn to ice. He hadn’t moved, but suddenly he was no longer on the street but inside.

There were bodies’… naked human bodies, hanging from the warehouse’s high ceiling. Human puppets, suspended by metal strings.

In his whole life he’d never seen something as horrifying as the faces of those Lilith was using to create the virus. From what he could understand, the virus was a product of human suffering… literally.

Unlike the natural or the human-made versions of a virus, this one was more than a living organism. It was an emotion, a gathered pool of despair and darkness. Bred purely from human pain.

It fell, like purple tears, from the bleeding hearts of Lilith’s victims, a smile on her face as she grabbed a long whip and made them bleed some more.

There had to be more than a thousand, hanging limp and bloody from the high ceiling of the warehouse that Lilith had chosen to spin her web. Old, young; women, men; white, black; Lilith was fair to all in her evilness. Dean couldn’t even tell if any of them were still alive.

For one dark, horrifying second, Dean thought Castiel had sent him back to Hell; such was the vision that pierced his sight. And as much as he wanted, and he desperately wanted to, he could not bring himself to close his eyes or look away. He owed those people the decency of not hiding away.

Through the gloom of the interior, those he could see stirring could barely do more than moan and blink their terrified eyes. Lilith had brought Hell and Hell’s punishments on to their earthly bodies and soon they had all discovered that flesh succumbed faster than ethereal soul to the demon’s touch.

Dean had to get those people out of there, not only to stop Lilith from producing any more virus but also because he couldn’t bare to witness others go though the same torture that he had. He was terrified to step foot inside that place and lose himself in a sight so similar to the world below, but he could not close his eyes without re-seeing all those flailed bodies, all those despairing eyes, all those lost souls.

“Are you drawing the street?” Sam asked, twisting his neck to get a better look at the squiggles coming to life under Dean’s black pen.

“No… yes… I’m trying,” Dean mumbled, forcing his mind to see geographic details and not the faces of the people Lilith had trapped there.

“Try focusing on street names,” Bobby pitched in, trying to help.

Dean just gave him a look that clearly said _dude, if I had street names I wouldn’t be going all arts’n’crafts-ey on you. _

“Got it… no street names.”

“But if Castiel knows where Lilith is, why doesn’t he do something?” Sam wondered aloud. “I mean, he is an angel after all…”

“Don’t know… maybe they have bigger fish to fry,” Dean said, biting the pen’s tip as he looked at the finished map. “This is it… can’t remember anything more.”

Bobby grabbed the paper from the other hunter’s hands. Dean was no artist, but he had an organized mind, prone to planning and schematics. It wasn’t hard to understand that he’d drew an alley from the point of view of someone standing in the back looking at the main street. Sam’s head joined his, blocking some of the light coming from the living room’s lamp.

“I can’t see any significant marks… this could be anywhere,” Sam offered, seeing nothing but tall buildings and trash cans. There was one half a round logo where Dean had written ‘fucking Starbucks’ in hurried letters and nothing else recognizable.

“It felt like a big place… a city,” Dean offered. “The air felt kind of closed, heavy; lot’s of noise in the background. Heavy traffic. Cursing drivers.”

Bobby and Sam looked at Dean instead of the drawing. The older  Winchester had his eyes closed, face tense with concentration and something else… repulsion?

“There was a sound louder than the others… like a train, only it sounded phased,” Dean went on, his eyes still closed, his mind once again lost in the images of his not-vision.

“Phased?” Sam asked, confused.

“Yeah… like the sound of one train moving, only broken in multiple parts… does that make any sense at all?”

“Not much, but the train in the middle of the street part at least can helps us narrow it down to a couple of cities,” Bobby said. “I think I had a book somewhere with a list of cities with surface trains…”

“Really?” Sam asked a bit surprised, his laptop already open and his fingers, like spiders, running through the keyboard.

“Do you have any idea of how many constructions sites are haunted by the people who worked on them?” Bobby said, getting up to search for said book.

‘_Had it somewhere… near the road maps encyclopedia… or was it the herbs book?’_

The strident ringing of Bobby’s phone broke the silence of the house.

“I’ll get the book,” Dean offered. “You get that.”

Bobby nodded, distracted enough by the unstoppable sound to realize that he’d never explained to Dean exactly where he could find the book.

Dean drifted over to a particular section of books, many older than all the others. He found the road maps encyclopedia with ease, but the rest were ancient, leather bound books with cracked and faded spines, barely readable. He scanned the bindings, the sound of Bobby’s one-sided conversation following him as he searched.

“Hello? Oh… Good to hear from you. How are things going?... Really? That’s great news… yeah, I’ll keep an eye open too… thanks Mark.”

Bobby hung up and looked back, meeting the pair of eyes that he could feel piercing a hole through his back.

“They managed to test all of yesterdays’ donations. Found a couple more of tainted samples,” he said to an anxious looking Sam.

“And from other days?” Dean asked from the door’s threshold, a large book under his right arm.

“They’re calling in all patients that were transfused this last week,” Bobby replied, a confused look crossing his face when he realized how fast Dean had managed to find a book that not even he was sure he had. “Other than that, I guess we’ll just have to keep an eye out.”

“And stop Lilith from producing any more of this damn virus,” Dean said, dropping the book on the table and grabbing a chair. “Is this the one you were talking about?”

“Yeah… any trouble finding it?”

“Nope… it was just lying there,” Dean lied. Inwardly, he cursed himself for not taking longer, playing it out some. He didn’t meet what he knew would be Bobby’s questioning eyes, instead burying his face in the pages of the book. “So…we’re looking from surface subways, that it?”

“It’s the best clue I can think to follow,” Bobby said, flipping through the pages of the thick book. “ New York and  Chicago sound like a good bet to me, but cities like  Philadelphia and  San Francisco have them too. We’ll have to be sure before driving all the way across the country in some wild goose chase.”

“We could use that same spell you’ve used before to find where Lilith is,” Sam suggested.

_  ‘The one you wouldn’t let me use to find the bitch and save Dean’ _ _ _

“Damn demon found a way to hide herself from that,” Bobby replied.

_ ‘You know that your mind wasn’t head-on straight when you asked me that… It would’ve just gotten you killed too… I tried later, son, I really did… but it wouldn’t work anymore’ _ _ _

Dean stood and paced, thinking, trying to focus on the external conversation going on, trying to block out the internal words that kept jumping to the front. 

_ ‘I could summon Ruby and just ask her’ _ _ _

That brought Dean up short. With effort he forced himself not to stare at Sam when that particular thought hit him. He would have to keep a close eye on his brother to stop him from doing something foolish. Like Bobby had apparently done when he was gone. Dean felt like hugging the man and buying him an endless supply of beers.

“What about some breakfast?” Dean asked instead, eager to get his hands busy, even if he couldn’t distract his mind. “Pancakes anyone?”

A pair of mumbled ‘ok’ and Dean escaped to the kitchen. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten pancakes, never mind actually _make_ them.

Dean chuckled. Pancakes.

The world was coming to an end; Lilith was busy as a bee breaking seals; there were hundreds of people whose lives were literally hanging in the balance, depending on them to find them in time; an angel of the Lord kept popping in and out of his life and messing with his existence… and he was going to make some pancakes.

If that wasn’t crazy, then someone should let all the loonies out of the nut-house.

Eggs. He needed eggs. Bobby looked like the kind of man that always had some eggs lying around.

The day that Sam had left for Stanford… Yeah, that was probably the last time he’d made some pancakes. Those hadn’t been eaten, lost in the confusion of shouted words and banging doors.

Flour too. And some syrup.

Opening the fridge, Dean discovered that Bobby, being the organized man that he was, kept all the pancakes ingredients together, in the cold.

_ ‘This is the closest I’ve gotten to Lilith… she’s going to pay for what she did to Dean’ _ _ _

_ ‘There’s no way we’ll be able to defeat her with nothing but Ruby’s knife’ _ _ _

_ ‘They’re going to get themselves killed… Gonna find a way to leave Bobby and Dean behind and face the bitch myself’ _ _ _

_ ‘I can say that I’m going to meet some contact of mine… meet up with Ruby’ _ _ _

Dean banged the egg’ shell against a white plastic bowl with more strength than necessary, mangling yellow yolk, white-egg and pink shell in a single disastrous mass.

It was getting easier to separate individual thoughts and understand whose images belonged to whose mind. From Bobby, Dean was getting mostly images of trains and railroads and subways, catalogues and catalogues of possible locations for Lilith’s hideout. Sam’s thoughts were jumping all over, from searching the right city, to figuring out how to kill Lilith, to Ruby.

Always Ruby.

Dean drowned the bowl in flour, covering the, mostly yellow, mess. Producing a spoon from one of Bobby’s drawers, Dean started to beat the crap out of his pancake. He ended up with a kind of ill-mashed pulp that would have to do with out the milk because Bobby didn’t have any. He did have gin though.

Dean grabbed the bottle from its hiding place and took a swing, hoping to muffle some of the thoughts that were not his own from his head. If this thing that Castiel had stuck him with was this bad when it was just Bobby and Sam, how was he supposed to even function when they reached a more populated area?

The alcohol burned like fire down Dean’s throat and hit his empty stomach like a sledgehammer. It felt good enough for him to take another gulp before putting the bottle back where he’d found it.

Buttering up a battered looking pan, Dean turned on the gas on Bobby’s kitchen stove and lit up a match. Too little sleep and the rush of booze in his veins had been enough to dampen Dean’s reflexes, turning something as simple as lighting a freaking match in to a difficult task.

One curse and two tries later, Dean finally managed to get a lit match in the vicinity of the waiting burner.

The resulting ball of fire wasn’t that spectacular in itself and if Dean hadn’t been so distracted with the mesh of confusing thoughts running inside his head, he would’ve remember that it’s not a good idea to keep the gas running while you fight with the damn matches.

It was the smell that made him grab the countertop and break in to a cold, clammy, sweat. That pork-like scent of singed human hairs filled his nose and did a lot more than remind Dean that, after all said and done, we were still nothing more than animals.

All of sudden, Dean wasn’t seeing Bobby’s somewhat old fashion kitchen anymore. He was seeing black blood and silver chains; he was seeing faceless monsters of smoke and claws. He was seeing his arms, scorched skin stripped away by fire, blood-red muscles glistening underneath, nerve endings screaming for an ending, body convulsing with phantom pains of an existence that was nothing but memory now but still hurt… still burned.

_ Where is your God now?  _ The taunting voice asked._ Why did He take away your wings?_

“Dean! Goddamn it!”

The claws felt like sharp knives, carving his back, stretching his skin like the wing of a bat, pulling, hanging, giving it form and shape.

_ There… I gave you your wings back _ .

“Dean… please… come on man!”

_ Now fly, my angel… fly once again _ .

Cold water collided with Dean’s face, a tide of wet reality that seemed out of place in Hell.

“Snap out of it boy!”

Dean blinked, his eyes reacting to the difference between the darkness of Hell and the too-bright morning’ sunlight coming in through Bobby’s kitchen windows like the passage had actually happen. The past and present warred for dominance in his mind, each losing and gaining ground alternatively.

The feeling of hanging up, strapped by the skin of his back, slowly morphed in to the cold linoleum of the kitchen’s tiles against his legs, his back and head propped against something warm and tense, like a stringed cord.

Bobby, empty glass of water still in his hands, was looking at him with an odd mixture of remorse and concern.

“Back with us now?”

Us. Meaning that the tense something that Dean could fell underneath him was his brother, half-holding him up, like he was some kind of big baby. Dean wanted to shrug him off and get up by his own steam, regain some amount of respect back, but his legs felt like jelly and he figure that a nosedive back to the floor wouldn’t do much for his dignity either way.

Dean just nodded in answer to Bobby. Not trusting his voice yet, he lifted one shaky hand to wipe the water from his face, clearing the excess from his eyes that he knew wasn’t just from Bobby improvised bath.

“Think you can get up?”

_ No. _ _ _

“Sure,” Dean whispered instead, taking the hand that Bobby offered and leaning against his brother. Seemed like he spent his whole life on the floor these days.

Sam’s bigger frame came in handy once in a while, namely, when he was acting as a crutch for his eighty-year-old brother. Feeling small wasn’t something that Dean welcomed on most days. Now was no an exception.

Dean finally sat on the kitchen chair that Bobby had dragged from the table, head resting on his hands, hiding his face in his palms. He took deep breaths that seemed to still leave his lungs only half full.

The heavy stares that he could feel on his back were only making the weight on his chest grow stronger.

The concern and sympathy rolling off both men were like warm blankets on a hot night, unwanted and unwelcome. Dean didn’t even have to guess what Bobby and his brother were thinking, which was kind of part of the problem.

The silence was growing uncomfortable for all. The sound of a train going by in the distance only heightened the sense that they didn’t have time for this.

“See if you can take him to the couch in the living room. Heck a lot more comfortable,” Bobby said to Sam, like Dean wasn’t even in the room.

In some ways, Dean felt that Bobby was right, visions of Hell still lingering in the periphery of his eyes, so he didn’t even offer a fake protest when Sam wrapped his arms around his chest and led him away from the kitchen.

“I’ll go make some coffee,” Bobby voice followed them to the next room.

_ ‘And clean up this mess’ _ _ _

_ ‘Give you boys some room to talk’ _ _ _

_ ‘Talk to your brother Sam! Put some sense in that thick head of his and make him accept our help’ _ _ _

_ ‘I knew this was coming… it was only a matter of time’ _ _ _

_ ‘What the heck are we going to do?’ _ _ _

_ ‘Do I even have coffee?’ _ _ _

All of which Bobby didn’t say, but Dean heard all the same.

Sam cleared his throat so harshly that Dean was sure he must have scratched something in the process.

“Wanna talk about it?”

And maybe, on top of everything else, Sam was a telepath too, because he was doing exactly what Bobby had ‘ordered’ him to.

The _‘please be ok’_ was still there, but the ‘_please say you don’t remember any of it’_ was now impossible to co-exist with the blunt evidence that yes, Dean was having not only dreams about his time in Hell but also, apparently, flashes of it in broad day light. The _‘God, I can’t deal with this right now’_ was shared by both brothers, even if Sam thought he was alone in that feeling.

Dean looked in to his brother’s eyes, feeling the sadness and worry that he could see there as if they were his own. No, he couldn’t deal with this right now either.

“Look, I know all that crap that shrinks and crack-head hippies advertise about ‘talking about it’ and ‘sharing your burden’ and shit,” Dean said, his gaze averted to the rim of Sam’s faded shirt, the stripped-blue one that he wore all the time. “But can we not talk about this now?” _Possibly ever?_

Sam looked like he was going to argue, but Dean knew that he was as relieved as he felt. It was a battle that neither of them was ready to fight just yet. It was easier to go after one of the nastiest demons that they ever faced and fight her instead.

A clasp of his forearm that felt like the stinging of needles and the silent _‘I’ll be here when you decide to talk’_ passed loud and clear from younger to older brother and even without his freaky mind reading abilities, Dean knew that Sam was being sincere in his offer. He just wasn’t sure he would ever be ready to take it.

The touch was abruptly ended, as if the contact stung Sam as well, and the younger  Winchester got up to grab his laptop from the table.

“So… we think we may have found where Lilith’s playground might be,” he said, forcing his voice to sound neutral and business like despite the emotions jumping up and down in his chest.

Dean’s green eyes met Sam’s hazel once more, questioning.

“ Chicago ,” Sam answered, some of the rush and joy of a successful research finding its way in to his eyes.

“ Chicago ? Why?” Dean asked, sitting up straighter on the couch.

“You said that the sound of the train was kind of phased,” Sam reminded him, like he had memorized every word Dean had said. He probably had.

“Yeah… so?”

“ Chicago ’s elevated train is one of the few that has a ‘loop’” Sam explained, opening his laptop and pointing to  Chicago ’s train site. “It’s a convergence of lines, causing at times the presence of more than one train at the same time.”

“Phased sound,” Bobby said from the door, steaming coffee pot and three cups in his hands. The nearly imperceptible look of disappointment thrown in Sam’s direction went completely unnoticed by Sam, but not Dean.

“All those trains going by,” Bobby continued setting down the coffee mugs and filling them with the strong, dark brew, “noise all day long… perfect for Lilith’s victims to go unnoticed. I bet’cha boys that’s where she’s hiding.”

“So, we’re basing all of this on nothing but sound?” Dean hated to sound skeptical when he hadn’t even helped in their research, but with so many lives on the line, he couldn’t afford not to be picky.

“Not only sound,” Sam explained, opening another window on his laptop screen. “I pulled up a satellite map of the area and crossed it with the map you drew,” he said, once again turning the screen so that Dean could see it too. “See this area here?” He pointed out..

“Perfect match,” Dean whispered.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean insisted on driving when they finally left Bobby’s place. Sam took over the passenger seat of the Impala and slept as the taillights of Bobby’s multicolor Chevelle serve as guide on their way to Chicago. Sam kept his silent promise of not pushing the subject and Bobby hadn’t really made any sort of comment on it, but Dean could see and hear the doubts in his mind. The big elephant that had been in the room before was now trotting at full speed behind the two cars.

No one had said anything about what they were going to do when they got to Chicago, or about Dean’s ‘condition’. Sam didn’t say a word about Ruby; no one asked if Castiel would be dropping by to give them a hand. In their silence, they were all agreeing with each other.  
Despite the urgency of their travel, the Winchesters weren’t heading to Chicago in a straight line, something that would’ve probably gotten them there before the end of the day. They were making a stop in Iowa first. Apparently, it was important.

Bobby had only mentioned a contact of his that they were supposed to meet in Des Moines but even that had been somewhat cryptic, a single mention that it was someone that had something that could help them.

Sam had protested to some extent, reminding the older hunter that they were wasting their time and that he and Dean could head straight to Chicago and Bobby could catch up later. The suggestion, a too cold reminder to Dean and Bobby of the time Sam had spent hunting on his own, hadn’t been well received by anyone.

Dean could feel the importance of the detour to Bobby, even if he couldn’t get any stray thoughts coming from the older hunter. Bobby’s mind was focused only on the road ahead and, oddly enough, on dry walls. Dean refused to dwell anything deeper than that. When Bobby was ready to share, he would tell them what was going on. It wasn’t as if all of them weren’t keeping secrets from one another. It felt like a freaking secret club.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

They had settled themselves to wait in the car when they arrived at the park, happy to let Bobby go meet with his contact on his own. The older hunter had other ideas and had asked them to come along.

More than once now, Dean had allowed his curiosity best him and had tried to have a peek in to Bobby’s brain and see who the hell they were meeting here. After too many hours driving with no idea of what they were doing in Des Moines, frankly, all the cloak and dagger stuff was driving him nuts… well, more nuts than the thousand of whispering voices that he’d been listening to ever since they had entered the city’s more populated borders. From Bobby though, not even a peep, just that dry, plain wall that Dean was starting to think was on propose.  
Dean took another swing of the bottle he kept in his pocket, waited for the voices to notch down a little bit more and then followed Sam out of the car.

A corridor of brown leafed trees flanked their path as they made their way to the lakes in the middle of the park. The weather was warm and even in a week days like this one, there were a lot of people around, walking their dogs, jogging, walking or simply seating around enjoying the sun on their skin.

The person Bobby was looking for was already waiting for them in one of the benches near the lake, two squirrels patiently waiting for the next chunk of bread that the plump African-American woman sitting there was offering them.  
“Hello, boys,” the fragile sounding voice seemed almost out of place in such a plump woman, but both Winchesters knew that there was nothing fragile about Missouri. “I’ve been waiting for this call for a very long time.”

Dean turned to Sam, who just shrugged, and then to Bobby, who met his eyes head-on, daring him to say anything. The plain wall that he’d been seeing for awhile suddenly vanished and in its place Dean could finally see all the little slips and doubts that he done to make Bobby suspicious of him. Enough slips for Bobby to call Missouri about him, because Bobby knew something.  
“Son of bitch!” Dean let out.

“I’ve been waiting for this call for close to twenty five years Dean,” Missouri said as she moved to grab his hand.

The reaction was simultaneous as both of them flinched back, hands drawn close to their bodies, as if they’d been burned.  
“Oh, honey… I had no idea,” the older woman said, her voice filled with sorrow and sympathy for the torment and suffering that she’d glimpsed inside Dean. “You poor thing… you did not deserved that.”

As for the hunter, Dean wasn’t quite sure of what he’d seen, but it was almost as if he was looking in to a twisted mirror, all of his emotions and feelings slung back at him, distorted by Missouri’s perception. It was a bit disturbing, to say the least.

“What call was that?” Sam asked. He hadn’t miss the double reaction, nor did he missed the way in which Bobby was quietly observing the interactions between those two, looking like he wasn’t as lost as the rest of them. “Is she the contact you were supposed to meet here? Why?”

It wasn’t Bobby who answered him. In fact, Bobby seemed pretty contended in to just lay back and let Missouri take the lead.

“Sam, sweetie, I would like to talk to your brother… alone. Is that ok?”

The tone had been gentle and questioning, but Sam had no doubt that he had no option in this. Whatever the hell was going on, Bobby and Missouri seemed in on it and there wasn’t much they would let him do about it. Dean, at least, seemed about as puzzled as he. Puzzled and weary. Of what exactly, Sam had no clue.

“You don’t have to worry about your brother, Sam… all will be explained in its due time,” the older woman reassured him, her small hand grabbing his in a gentle gesture. She didn’t flinch back, like it had happen with Dean, but the sadness reached her eyes all the same. “You poor boys… all will be better soon, don’t you worry.”

Dean watched as Sam was semi-dragged away by Bobby. He could feel Missouri’s eyes on his back, feel the pressure of her mind trying to assess his, feel her uneasiness as to how to proceed. It occurred to him that, in some way, they were the same.

“Come, walk with me,” she finally said, closing her bag to the infinite sadness of her little starved rodent friends.

To anyone looking, they looked just like two friends, having a relaxing walk in the park. The tension, however, was easy to sense to anyone that came near enough.

“Twenty five years?” Dean finally asked, because that was the only thing that he couldn’t figure. It was clear who had made the call and he could guess what the call had been about. He should’ve known that he couldn’t fool Bobby for too long.

“You were barely a baby then, Dean, and you were already carrying the weight of the world on your tiny shoulders. You were such a sad little boy,” Missouri started, not looking at him, her eyes lost in the past.

“Thought you said I was a goofy looking kid,” Dean said, remembering their previous encounter in Lawrence. She hadn’t been very nice to him then.

She stopped and faced him for a second before resuming her walk.  
“It was never about your looks, boy,” she said, pondering what she had seen and felt before. “Though if you ask me, the goofiness never really went away.”

Dean thought he should be offended but he didn’t really care. The sense of care and fondness that accompanied every single word coming from Missouri’s mouth made it particularly hard to be mad at her for anything.

“Your poor father, God bless his soul, knew nothing about nothing when he came to me that first time,” she went on. “And there were a couple of things that I didn’t tell him until much, much later.”

“Like what things?”

_‘You know perfectly well what I’m talking about Dean Winchester’  
_

Dean stared at the back of the older woman for awhile before realizing that he had stopped dead in his tracks and Missouri had just kept on walking.

“Well, don’t stand there, mouth gaping like some fish out of his bowl… I’ve known about your gift even before you did, before you were old enough to realize what it meant.”  
The older Winchester could feel his legs going out, muscles as strong as wet spaghetti. The wooden bench by his side was a welcoming alternative to landing on his ass.

All this time, Dean had latched on to the idea that all that was happening to him now was Castiel’s fault. That this telepathy weirdness was a result of the angel’s funky hand-mojo. That, most importantly of all, when this was all over, he could convince Castiel to make him normal again, to take it away.

But Castiel had already said that he could not take away something that he had not given him in the first place. Dean should’ve figured that an angel wouldn’t be lying through his divine teeth.

Castiel couldn’t take away what had always been a part of him. He’d always been a freak. He would always be one.

“You’re not a freak, honey… don’t you ever think that… unless you think I am a freak too… or that your brother is.”  
Dean shook his head. No, of course he didn’t see Sam as freak, but his brother was a normal guy who had been unfortunate enough to be fucked over by a demon with a grudge. He didn’t have that sort of excuse. Did he?

“All of our gifts come from some place, or some higher power, Dean, but no, your gift was not a result of any demon taint. But that’s not what’s important,” she went on, a chubby hand resting on top of the hunter’s shoulder. “What’s really important is what you do with it.”

Dean snorted, trying to ignore the irony that his part in this conversation about his freakiness was being held inside his own head.

“Most psychics come to realize their gifts somewhere around their teen years… some even later than that. It’s easier then to deal with the change, when they’re going from childhood to being adults,” Missouri said, leaving Dean alone in his thoughts, knowing that he was still listening to her. “Even so, it is terribly hard on some, on account of them being raised believing that such things do not exist. You, on the other hand, came to your gifts when you were but a baby, on account of what happened to your momma.”

Dean looked at her again, realizing for the first time that, if there was someone that could help him with this, it was Missouri.

“How do you know all that?” He asked.

The older woman smiled, happy for the small accomplishment that she knew had been achieved. “Your father didn’t trusted many people back then, so, it took a while for him to trust me enough to bring you and your brother with him when he came to my house. When he finally did, you had just turned five and your brother was just starting to crawl around. The minute I touched either of you, I knew you were both special.”

“But you said nothing to my father,” Dean said, trying not to sound accusing.

“I didn’t… John had too much on his head those days, and his grief was still too fresh. And then, there was you boys. To tell your father then that both his sons had psychic powers would’ve burdened you even more.”

“How come?”

“You weren’t talking then, Dean,” Missouri said, her eyes once again looking distant and not quite in the present. Somewhere inside her head, Dean could see perfectly the image of a blond little boy, with eyes too big for his face and deep, dark bags underneath them. “When John left my house, you were able to talk again.”

“Why? What did you do?”

“You were too little to understand or control your gift. Dealing with what had happen to your momma, the confusion of not quite understanding why she was gone, on top of being overburdened with John’s feelings of grief and despair and all those grim thoughts that were not even your own… it was too much for you then. You simply shut down and stopped talking all together.”

Dean had his eyes close, trying to remember the fog of those days.  
“That night… I could sense the demon inside our house… I felt my mom die,” he whispered, his eyes stinging from the onslaught of buried old emotions.

“Yes, honey, that’s what I saw inside your head then too. That’s when I realized that, like many telepaths, you were also able to feel the emotion and pain of others as your own. It is a dangerous combination and the results were very clear in your case. You were so broken that I did the only thing that I could think of to help you,” she said, her eyes shinny with tears of her own. “I blocked your gifts, helped you built a wall around them, until you were healed enough to be able to deal with it.”

“Come again?”

“I blocked your gifts, Dean. Kept them hidden and secure,” Missouri said with the same casualness of a parent saying he’d hidden the kid’s playstation until the kid’s grades were higher. “I was hopping that, as you got older, you’d be able to unblock it on your own, but I guess you never did.”

Dean leaned back against the bench, the warm sun falling on his face and, for a second, turning his world safe and bright. The feeling was gone as soon as he remembered his last meeting with Missouri.  
“Twenty five years… why didn’t you remove the block when we met in Lawrence?

Missouri sighed, like this was an argument she’d had with herself too many times.  
“I thought about it… in fact, I came very close to doing it then,” she confessed. “But in those days, it was your brother’s grief that scared me… things hadn’t changed that much since your childhood… you were older, sure, but your problems had gotten that much bigger too and also…”

The psychic took Dean’s hand in hers and closed her eyes.

Suddenly, the sunny park was gone and Dean was back in Missouri’s house, in Lawrence. He could hear his brother’s voice, asking about their old house, him asking about what had killed their mom.

Dean remembered that conversation well. What he didn’t remember was that other presence inside Missouri’s house. A familiar presence, someone he would’ve given everything to have by his side then, when he was back to the place he hated the most. Someone that he had called on the phone, only to have his call for help answered by a recorded, cold voicemail.“My dad was there,” Dean said, surprised that his eyes had been closed as well.

Missouri let go of his hand, still looking pained from the contact.“Yes, yes he was and it surprised me greatly that you couldn’t sense him then… made me angry too, at you both” she confessed.

“Why?”

“Something like this, like what you can do… it is a precious gift from God…. You do not throw it away or hide it under the couch like I saw you doing your whole life. When I saw you again, you were repressing your gift so hard that I often wondered how you could use your brain for anything else.”

Dean snorted. He remembered well all of Missouri’s veiled remarks at his mental prowess.

“And then there was your daddy… he didn’t wanted me to tell you any of this.”

Dean looked down, the realization that his father knew what he was and was ashamed of him bringing forward all those feelings of inadequacy that he’d been fighting for so long.

“No… none of that boy!” Missouri was quick to add, his thoughts as always no secret to her. “John was very proud of you, of both his boys… you should’ve heard him talk about the things you and your brother could do, the things you’d both achieved. The people you’d helped even when he was not around, the way you both stood by each other… that man loved you both more than anything in the world. Dean, he knew what you and your brother could do… about your gifts and his only concern on that matter was for what others might do about it if they ever found out.”

“Then why?” Dean whispered, afraid to hear Missouri’s answer.

“Because you didn’t want it. My block was not that strong, Dean… if you had truly wanted it back, you could’ve had it back with no problem. Your father made me realize that and asked me to allow you to come to terms with it yourself, in your own time.”

“Well, someone wasn’t as considerate as you about that,” Dean mumbled. “This isn’t a gift… this is a freaking nuisance!”

Dean jumped out of the bench and for a second considered the benefits of just making a run for it. He figured that he would never be able to run fast enough.

“Is that what you really feel about this, child?”

Missouri’s gentle voice stopped him from going any further. Dean took a deep breath. He would give anything to make this go away. What kind of psychic was Missouri if she couldn’t see that much?

“People’s thoughts are their own… I don’t want to be some kind of peeping tom in other people’s heads!”

“Is that what you think I am, boy?”

Dean turned back to face her, sensing the imminent storm in her tone.  
“… No… I… It’s not,” Dean tried to put at least one of his thoughts in to words. He sat back down. “How can it not be?” _How do I stop this?_

Missouri smiled, a hand coming to rest on Dean’ shoulder.  
“That is why I am here, boy… being a telepath and a bit of a empath, like you are, is so much more that being a ‘peeping tom’… specially in your case. Especially with what you do for a living.”

Dean looked at her questioningly. He could hear what others were thinking and feel what they were feeling… what else could there be other than that?

“Do you know what the first words out of your mouth were, as soon as I put that block up?”

Dean shook his head. He couldn’t even remember where they were living at the time, much less anything about his father’s dealings with the psychic.

“’Sammy doesn’t like the blue pajamas… makes his legs itchy’.”

“I said that?” Dean said, his breathing itching inside his chest.

He remembered those pajamas. They had been his and the only reason for Sam wearing them was because he’d had them on the night their mother died. Everything else had burned along with their house. It had taken forever to clean the smell of smoke from those pajamas.

Missouri nodded.  
“You were just a little kid, who hadn’t spoken a single word in months and the first words out of your mouth were to help your baby brother express himself when he couldn’t.”

Dean scratched his head. He really hadn’t thought about that.“So… you’re saying that I can use this… thing… to help those who can’t speak for themselves… that there’s actually an upside to this whole mess?”

“There are plenty of upsides, Dean… you just need time to learn them all.”

“But I can hear them all the time, Missouri… it’s driving me insane,” Dean confessed, no longer able to keep that secret inside. “Sometimes, I can’t even tell which thoughts are mine… which feelings are mine.” _I’m loosing myself in all the others._

Missouri’s grip on his shoulder intensified.  
“Come here for a second,” she beckoned him, getting up and moving closer to the lake. “What do you see there?”

Dean looked down. The clear water reflected back the clean blue sky and their distorted images. “I see us.”

“Wrong,” Missouri said as she carefully tapped the sole of her shoe in to the lake, disrupting the water and their mirrored image. “Look again.”

Dean looked at her, trying to guess if she was making fun of him or being possessed by the spirit of freaking Yoda.  
“I see water,” he said this time, annoyed.

The woman beside him said nothing, once again opening her bag and this time throwing some bread to the swimming ducks in the lake.  
Seeing that a foot tapping in the water was as much help as Missouri seemed ready to provide, Dean looked ahead. The surface of the lake rippled, cut clean by the speeding ducks swimming in their direction. Inverted trees in the water shimmered and disappeared, only to come back again when the surface got quieter. He soon realized what Missouri was trying to make him understand.

“So, my mind is like water?” He asked her. “I may reflect what others are thinking, I may change color depending on the sky above me, I may change shape depending of what ever floats, but I remain water all the same?”

Missouri smiled, that proud smile that teachers often give when one of their students makes a brilliant leap ahead. “Wasn’t that hard, was it?”  
“Well, that might all sound awesome in whatever new age-y group you’re leading, but, borrowing your analogy there, how do I keep myself from drowning in all of this?”

Missouri’s hand sneaked in to Dean’s jacket pocket.  
“You stop trying to drown in this and start listening to what I have to teach you,” she said, showing him the bottle that she’d taken before throwing it in the trashcan.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Dean left Missouri in the bus stop. He’d ended up telling the woman about everything that had happened. If she was to help him, she needed to be in possession of all the facts. It felt good to finally take some of that weight off his chest, even if she hadn’t offer much help in the matter of Sam’s future.

Dean spent the rest of the afternoon walking aimlessly through the streets of Des Moines, working his way towards being able to block other people’s thoughts from his mind. He wasn’t there yet, but that deep sense of panic that only alcohol seemed to put a dent on these days, was getting considerable smaller.

Missouri had taught him some tricks, things that he could use to avoid listening to other people’s thoughts all the time. She had also opened his eyes to other things that he could do, things he hadn’t even realized because he was too afraid to look too deeply in to his ability. He was still scared of what he could do but, now that he had managed to get some control of it, it didn’t feel like such an impossible task to live with it.

Bobby and Sam had left a note in the windshield of the Impala telling him where he could find them once he was done with his ‘secret shit’. Sam’s wording, no doubt.  
Dean was sure that he was about to deal with a very pissed off brother. And a possibly, by association, very pissed off Bobby.

Dean wasn’t sure how much of what Missouri had told him was common knowledge to Bobby as well, but he knew that there was no way in hell that he would be able to face them now without giving them _something_. Not to mention the fact that he had left the older hunter to deal with Sam’s curiosity and, no doubt pout, the whole afternoon.

The lights were on in the last apartment of the first floor of the motel the note had mentioned, Bobby’s Chevelle parked in front of it. Dean parked the Impala in the space adjacent, took his duffel bag from the trunk and locked the car.

Dean was biding his time to walk inside that room. This was a conversation that he wasn’t particularly looking forward to, but all the same, one that he could not escape much longer. He closed his eyes, using one of the tricks Missouri had told him about, and tried to sense the mood of the occupants of the room.

Contrary to what he had thought, it wasn’t anger or even annoyance that he could feel coming from Sam or Booby. It was concern and anxiety. Pain.  
There was someone else in the room with them, a presence that Dean didn’t know, but a presence that he was sure he wouldn’t like to meet.

Concentrating harder, Dean looked for specific thoughts coming from either hunter. Sam, he could tell, was itching to use his powers and just deal with the threat inside the room, but something was stopping him from doing that.

Bobby’s mind was filled with Latin. Exorcism after exorcism, the older hunter was searching his mind for the best set of words to send the presence in their room back to Hell.

A demon then… and they were all waiting for him to open the door.


	8. Chapter 8

John Winchester had never bothered much with teaching his sons how to spell or do math before they went to school. No point in doing it after they started either. That was what school teachers were for and he would call them on it if they weren’t doing their job properly.

  
Instead, he taught his sons the stuff that he knew Miss Krumpsfell from first grade would never be able to. He taught them about the evil of this world; he taught them about weapons and how to defend themselves; he taught them about strategy and how to think on your feet with a reasonable plan.

  
Had he been alive, John Winchester wouldn’t have been pleased with his eldest son right now.

  
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

  
Being honest with himself, Dean hadn’t thought much further than the bust-in-the-room and violently stab the demonic son of bitch that was hurting his brother and Bobby.

  
It wasn’t much of a plan in itself but, with one of his hands already turning the door handle and the other grasping Ruby’s knife with enough force to turn his knuckles white, it was the best that Dean could come up with on such short notice. Tested and tried, it was a plan that had proven worthy on occasion.

  
Too many grim scenarios had crossed his mind. Dean imagined opening the door and finding Lilith waiting for him inside; he imagined his brother and Bobby, both bloodied on the floor, limbs twisted out of shape; he imagined one of them pinned to the ceiling, another to the wall, just waiting for his arrival to be gutted and set on fire; he imagined that he would open the door and see nothing but a blast of demonic power and just end up dead before he could help them.

  
Dean hadn’t imagined the very worst though.

  
Bursting in to the hotel room, Dean was stunned to silence as the only people he could see inside were Bobby and his brother. It wasn’t a particularly big room and from where he stood, Dean could see the only other division, a small bathroom, door wide-open and empty shower stall. No opened windows, no back door to escape from. And exactly why would a demon run away from him?

  
The whole room smelled of alcohol, the JD kind, not the medicinal one. The broken bottle at the end of the bed where Sam was currently sprawled, seemed the likely suspect.

  
Bobby sat at the table, relaxed, like he didn’t have a care in the world. He was looking at Dean’s hand-wielding-knife stance, ready to pounce and strike, like he was the biggest idiot to ever walk the earth.

  
For a second, Dean felt like he _was_ the biggest idiot.

  
It wasn’t as if he could claim experience in the matter, but he was sure he had felt a third presence inside the room. A presence that made his skin crawl and the small hairs at the back of his neck rise to attention.

  
The feeling wasn’t new to Dean. To some extent, he realized now, he had always felt something akin to that whenever some evil thing was near. Hunter’s instincts, he’d called it, attributing the highly developed senses to his father’s training. Now he knew that it had always been something more than mere instincts and training. Now that he was doing it consciously, he could say for sure that this presence was demonic and not just someone having a really, really bad day.

  
“Something on your mind?” Bobby asked.

  
The way those few words were spoken sent a chill all the way up Dean’s back. The presence was still there all right, just not in plain sight. There was only one sure way to know.

  
“Cristo,” Dean whispered. He almost closed his eyes to avoid seeing the result of his call, but he knew that wouldn’t change the outcome.

  
As expected, Bobby’s grey eyes turned black and, almost immediately, Dean was flying across the room. His back collided painfully with the wall near his brother’s bed.

  
The sound of a body hitting the wall’s unforgiving surface roused Sam enough for him to turn and allow Dean to see his bloodied nose and tied hands.

  
“Sam? Sammy, can you hear me?” Dean tried to get his brother’s attention. The frustration of being just inches away from Sam and yet be unable to move a finger to touch his brother and figure out what was wrong made Dean growl and clench his teeth. “Sam…”

  
Sam’s only reaction was to look at Dean in a way that was anything but focused, give a slurred ‘Dween’ after which his eyelids slid back down. Drunk, drugged or concussed? Dean wasn’t even sure which one would he’s rather it be.

  
“You know, I’ve heard so much about you two that I came here expecting more of a challenge. The boy-king and the angel’s boy-toy,” the thing inside Bobby said, getting away from the table and closer to the wall-pinned Winchester. “To say I’m a bit disappointed is a really big understatement.”

  
“What’d you do to my brother, you fucking piece of shit?” Dean hissed from his spot, struggling against his invisible bonds. Futile as it was, it felt slightly better than to just stand there and do nothing.

  
From Sam’s mind, Dean could still hear all the plans that his little brother was contemplating to get up and defeat the demon in their midst. Almost all of them ended with Bobby’s bloody head in Sam’s hands, something that dosed Sam’s anger and hatred with a healthy dose of regret and shame before he moved on to the next delirious plan. It was a small relief to know that his mind was still somewhat coherent, even if Sam’s body wasn’t acting in accord to plan.

  
“What makes you think I did anything to little Sammy?” The mocking tone didn’t set well with Bobby’s usually gruff voice. “He was feeling kind of betrayed by his big brother… I just offered a friendly shoulder.”

  
The image of his brother downing shot after shot of whiskey, trusting Bobby to tell him when to stop, not realizing that Bobby wasn’t even Bobby anymore, was too clear and painful inside Dean’s mind.

  
“And a bottle of Jack,” Dean added, guilt washing over him that his actions had driven his brother to that.

  
“Two actually,” not-Bobby smugly corrected. “He got kind of clumsy with the second one.” Throwing a dismissive look towards the semi-conscious Winchester, he continued, “Sammy there has been a very, very bad boy, using the powers that Azazel gave him to throw my kind back into Hell… seems kind of ungrateful, if you ask me,” the demon mused to himself. “Eventually he figured out that I wasn’t his buddy Bobby and tried to kick me out… guess he didn’t know that he needs to be able to concentrate to do his little thingy…”

  
“So you got him drunk?”

  
“Like a cheap date,” the demon chuckled.

  
“What do you want from us?” Dean asked.

  
“Me? Nothing. I wasn’t even looking for you losers until I stumbled across dear ol’Bobby,” the demon said, getting closer to Dean. His attention went from the hunter’s defiant face to the knife still grasped in his immobilized hand. “Lilith though… she has a whole bunch of things that she wants with you and your brother... main reason why he’s still breathing really.”

  
When not-Bobby reached to take the knife out of his hand, Dean renewed his struggles. That knife was the last thing they had that could help them to actually kill demons, other than Sammy’s hand-mojo thing. They lose it, and it was back to trapping and exorcising demons for them.

  
The demon had no trouble in prying it from Dean’s lax fingers.

  
“I’m just acting as Lilith’s FedEx service for the moment,” the demon said, admiring the craftsmanship of the blade. “Waiting on my ride to ship you both to her… sort of like a favor between co-workers.”

  
Whatever plans Lilith had for them, Dean was sure he didn’t want to find out. With Sam out for the count and him pinned like a bug, things were not looking so great for the Winchester team.

While not usually one to wait for others to come and rescue him, this time however, Dean really wished that Castiel would make one of his surprise visits. Or that Bobby would be able to fight this thing inside of him.

  
It was hard standing so close to the man that had been a father figure to him for so long and, instead of the intelligent eyes and snarky personality that both he and Sam had grown up with, to see nothing but coldness and evilness.

  
And yet…

  
The constant stream of Latin exorcisms that Dean had listened to from outside could’ve only come from Bobby, he was sure of that. If he looked for it even now, it was still there, like a smoothing white noise, the same Latin words repeated over and over again.

  
Which meant that, somewhere trapped inside his own head, Bobby was still fighting, was still aware of what this demon was doing with his body.

  
“You know, a couple of pals of mine told me wonderful things about you,” the demon said, getting even closer to his prisoner, whispering in to his ear. “Told me how lovely you scream, how delicious you look with your guts hanging lose, how beautifully you sound when you beg and cower.”

  
Dean tried to turn his head away, but this demon’s hold on him was strong. He could barely blink his eyes.

  
“You know,” not-Bobby hissed, his eyes suddenly glowing with the light of a new idea, one Dean was sure didn’t want to hear. “Lilith wasn’t very specific about the condition in which she wanted you delivered. Just alive, she said… maybe we can play a little before we leave,” it grinned, the tip of the blade traveling sluggishly across Dean’s throat, barely making contact. “Lets have some fun.”

  
The hunter tried not to flinch when the knife’s edge dug deeper, slicing into the muscle part of his neck. A warm, sickly rivulet of blood began snaking its way towards the rim of his shirt.

  
Dean turned his head, staring resolutely at the light switch on the wall in front of him, not because it was a particularly inspiring light switch, or even because he couldn’t deal with this demon’s old, unoriginal, number of ‘I’m gonna torture you’ and ‘you’re gonna scream’. No, Dean had more important things on his mind right then. Like getting inside Bobby’s head.

  
Missouri had given him the basics only, there really was no time for much more, but Dean had always prided himself for being a quick study.

  
Trying to forget everything that was happening around him, struggling to ignore what the demon was doing or saying, Dean focused his eyes on the wall, letting everything else slowly blur out of existence, allowing his mind to see nothing but that old, yellowed, dirty light switch. The slow beat of his heart beating gently against his ear drums, Dean allowed his mind to become that old, yellowed, dirty light switch. And then he flipped the switch.

  
Like with the dream root, Dean wouldn’t have known if his plan had worked or not, if it weren’t for the total darkness that greeted him. The small hotel room was gone. Everything was gone. Only the blackness and a cold sense of despair and pain remained. Bobby’s mind.

_  
Deus caeli, Deus terrae, humiliter majesti gloriae Tuae…_

_ **  
Bobby?** _

_  
Omni infernalium spirituum_ _… Dean?_

_ **  
Who else?** _

_  
What the hell are you doing here? _How_ the hell are you even here?_

_ **  
I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version later… do you know what’s happening?** _

_  
Yeah… some demonic bastard jumped me when I went in to book this room. Five seconds… five seconds  
was all it took for that damn thing to get a jump on me, protection charms and all. Sam didn’t know a thing… I couldn’t even warn him…_

_ **  
That’s ok, Bobby, we’ll figure this out.** _

_  
Just use Ruby’s knife and get this damn thing out of me! I can’t stand to hurt you boys… even as we speak… I can feel your blood warming my hand… I’m hurting you, son… just do us both a favor and kill me!_

_ **  
No one’s gonna die here, Bobby. I promise you that!** _

_  
Don’t make promises that you can’t keep, boy._

_ **  
I’m going to rip this son of bitch from you and send it straight into Hell… and you’re gonna help  
me.** _

_  
How?_

_ **  
When I give you the signal, start the exorcism that you’ve been yelling at him.** _

_  
But that didn’t work before._

_ **  
It will now… trust me.** _

  
It felt kind of strange to return to his body, especially because, technically, he had never left, but to Dean it was like clicking a latch, sliding in to his rightful place. His body, however had been having some fun of its own.

  
Sweat coated his face and neck, clothes clinging wet and uncomfortably to the skin of his chest. Dean grimaced at the pain in his legs where the muscles were cramping from the position that was being forced to maintain. The demon had decided to be inventive in his carving.

  
Dean could feel the long gash in his right arm, shirtsleeve cut at the elbow, blood making an audible drip as it hit the floor. On his left thigh, exposed flesh prickled at the cool air, in sharp contrast to the feel of hot blood leaking from two jagged cuts. Somewhat startled by that sensation, Dean realized that his pants were now pooled around his ankles, obviously to allow better access to his skin. He hoped.

  
The demon was currently entertained with carving a straight line across his forehead, the look of concentration in Bobby’s face so familiar that Dean felt his stomach churn.

  
One quick look at the nearest bed told him that his brother’s condition hadn’t changed that much, his breathing regular and loud, not so different from the few other times Dean had witnessed him drink himself to sleep. The nosebleed, probably from forcing his brain out of its drunken stupor, had already stopped.

  
Dean took a deep breath and prayed that his crazy plan would work. Either way, he needed to act now.

  
“You know, this would be a lot more fun if the two of us could play,” Dean said, tasting his own blood as he opened his mouth and a few drops fell between his lips.

  
The demon paid him no attention.

  
Dean was desperate, he needed to buy time, so he continued. “Still waiting on your ride, hum? Maybe Lilith decided that she’s got more important things to do and forgot about you… what’s say we put this whole thing on hold and try it another day?”

  
No reaction, just a small shift as the demon reached higher to grab Dean’s hair and push it out of the way. With his pants down and Bobby’s body invading his personal space more than what he was comfortable with, Dean struggled to focus and keep to his plan of distracting the demon from his ‘activities’.

  
“So, Lilith says ‘go fetch’ and you wiggled your little demonic ass and go do it,” Dean tried again, adding a smirk that almost managed to not seem forced. “You know that basically makes you her bitch, right?”

  
The demon did stop then, looking like, for a couple of moments, he had forgotten that the body he was cutting in to actually belonged to someone. Suddenly, he grabbed Dean’s short hair harder and tilted his head back, the angle meant to be both painful and handy for him to look in to the hunter’s eyes, studying him, waiting for Dean’s eyes to water and some fear to show in the green pools. The demon was greeted only by contempt and loathing.

  
“You don’t ever give up do you? You know, they told me you were a bit of a masochist, but I hadn’t believed them… you know how demons enjoy lying and all that,” it said, cleaning the now bloody knife on Dean’s pale cheeks. “But you… you actually enjoy this enough to goad me on to more! You’re all fucked up, you know that, right?”

  
“Yeah, that’s me… but on the scale of sadistic demonic bastards, you barely make the list, you know that, right?” Dean said, the words losing some of their effect with the gasp that escaped him when the tip of demon’s blade traveled from his forehead to the corner of his left eye, the sharp tip of the bloody blade leaving a red teardrop behind. Dean dry swallowed. “Ok… I’ll give you maybe a nine?”

  
Just when Dean figured that he had let his smart-mouth go too far, the demon threw his head back and actually laughed. “I like you, Dean Winchester, I really do… maybe I’ll ask Lilith to keep you when she’s done with you.”

_ **  
Do it now Bobby… as loud as you can!** _

  
Trusting that Bobby had gotten his message, Dean forced himself to look straight in to the black eyes of the demon torturing him. “I’ll make sure to put in a good word for you.”

_  
Deus caeli, Deus terrae, humiliter majesti gloriae Tuae supplicamus…_

  
Ignoring Bobby’s voice inside his head and the power of the words that he was saying, Dean searched the part inside of his friend that wasn’t Bobby, the impostor, the demon. Outside, he was barely aware of the confused look growing deeper and deeper in the demon’s borrowed face.

_  
Omni infernalium spirituum, laqueo, deceptione et nequitia, omnis fallaciae libera nos…_

  
At first, there was nothing there. Just a vast emptiness that sounded like the hum of a thousand bees, waves of low grade sound that numbed his ears. The sudden feeling that he had walked straight in to a refrigerator chilled Dean down to the very core of his essence, of his soul.

_  
Vade Satana, inventor et magister, onmis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis…_

  
Dean felt like he was drowning in thick tar, blackness so dark that it was truly the absence of any color or light. Despair filled the non-air that he was breathing, filling his lungs and his mind. The knowledge that turning back was a death sentence to Sam and Bobby kept Dean struggling forward. It had nothing to do with courage. It was pure fear of losing the two most important people in his life.

_  
Exorcizamos te, spiritus immundus, satanica potestas, onmis incursion…_

  
There, at the edge of his perception, Dean could feel the source of the demon’s essence, the part of him that wasn’t smoke and mirrors, the part that he had brought with him from Hell. Evilness.

_  
Infernalis adversaii, omnis legio et secta diabolica, omnis congragatio et secta diabolica…_

  
Dean looked in to the face of evil and joined his voice with Bobby’s.

_  
Libera nos, Domine!_ _ **  
Libera nos, Domine!** _

  
There was a low growl, a disturbing wail between the cry of a child and the scream of a wild animal, a piercing sound that escaped description and assaulted Dean’s ears for what felt like forever. And then, suddenly, the blackness was thinning, like smoke climbing out an open window, and Dean could see his way around.

  
He was in Bobby’s living room. The tidy version. Bobby’s version of a cozy place inside his mind.

  
The heavy weight that had been pressing against Dean and that he hadn’t really managed to put a name to, was gone. The demon was gone.

  
Bobby was seated in his couch, head between his hands, graying hair sticking in all directions as if looking for the trademark trucker’s cap.

  
“This is too weird,” he whispered.

  
Dean wondered if Bobby was talking to him or himself. Dean wasn’t even sure if Bobby knew that this was happening only inside his head and not for real. Or maybe he was the one mistaken and this was a real as it got. Could Bobby see that he was standing right there? Why was he even still there?

  
“I have no idea how that son of a bitch got the jump on me… I had my charms with me… never go without them… God damn it!” Bobby continued his monologue, deep voice growing in volume as the anger and self-loathing grew inside of him. To the efficient and skillful hunter there were few things worst than a screw like this.

  
Dean moved to sit next to the other man, his movements fluid and pain free. He looked down, realizing then that his jeans where in their rightful place and that, whatever damage the demon had inflicted on his body, hadn’t translate in here.

  
Bobby acknowledged the presence of the young man seating next to him by edging himself away. Dean could feel the guilt and embarrassment rolling off of him as tidal waves. It was a side of Bobby that he’d never seen before. A side that he didn’t want to see ever again.

  
“There’s no point in beating yourself up… we knew those charms might not work with all of them... we just need to find better ones from now on. If they even exist and of anyone can find them, you’re it man.”

  
Bobby looked at the young man sitting next to him on a ‘couch’ inside his head, giving him a pep talk. He was sure that there was something deeply wrong about that, but for now he would settle for the lack of accusation and sort of absolution that Dean was giving him. And speaking of something deeply wrong…

“Exactly how did you do that little trick just then?”

  
Dean scratched his short hair. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to tell Bobby, it was more along the lines that he didn’t really know how to explain it. Like he didn’t know what he was still doing there or how he was suppose to return to his own mind.

  
The first time it had been kind of automatic, like clicking his ruby shoes and wishing there’s no place like home.

  
He was worried sick about Sammy and he was sure that this particular demon wasn’t acting alone, which meant that they had to high tail out of there as soon as they could. That ‘ride’ the demon kept talking about was bound to arrive some time.

  
“Can you please wake up first?” Dean asked Bobby, instead of answering his question. “I think I’m stuck in here and we really, really need to get a move on.”

  
Bobby seemed a little put off by Dean’s dismissal, but he was a man that could recognize a priority when he saw one. He tried to remember exactly what he’d done when he was trapped in the dream root nightmare. Closing his eyes, Bobby pictured himself waking up. When he opened them again, Dean was still seated on the couch, looking expectantly at him.

  
“No good?”

  
“Nope,” Bobby confirmed. “And as it looks that we ain’t going no where…”

  
Dean sighed. It wasn’t like he could say that it had been a fluke, or that he had no idea. As it was turning out, the one conversation that he didn’t wanna have the first time, he would be having twice now, one for Bobby, one for Sam.

  
“So, you’re psychic, like your brother?” Bobby said, cutting to the chase.

  
Dean looked for any kind of recrimination in the other man’s face but he found none.

“Kind of?”

  
Truth was, he didn’t know. Missouri had assured him that his pow…uh… his _thing_ hadn’t come from Azazel, and he really doubted that Castiel would go to the trouble of putting him in touch again with something a demon had given him. So in that regard, no, this telepathy thing wasn’t the same as Sam’s powers.

  
But on the other hand, it was one hell of a coincidence that both he and his brother were able to do things that escaped the normal concept of… well, normal.

  
“You didn’t know I had this?” Dean asked, remembering that Bobby had been the one to rat him out to Missouri.

  
Bobby looked down, not meeting Dean’s eyes.

“I’ve known that there was something different about you ever since…” Bobby stopped himself, his gaze fixed on Dean’s amulet, the wariness of how to proceed clear in the older man’s face. “Well… let’s just say that when you can avoid slaps before they even happen, and you’re able to fetch me something before I can even tell you where it is, it raises some suspicions… I’m a smart man, remember?”

  
Despite the forced jovial tone, Dean could tell that there was something that Bobby wasn’t telling him. Now that he could though, Dean chose not to pry into the other man’s head. Anymore than what he already was, that is.

“I guess I slipped up, huh?”

  
“When did this start?” Bobby asked.

  
It was Dean’s turn to look away. This was exactly the part that he wanted to skip ahead. So, now would be the perfect time for Bobby to finally wake up and get them out of there.

  
He looked up. Bobby was still waiting.

  
“When I was four, according to Missouri,” Dean finally said. “She blocked them away and then… Castiel unblocked them.”

  
“Castiel? The angel? Why would he do that? And what exactly are ‘them’?”

  
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

“Um… I can sort of listen to people’s thoughts and feel their emotions,” Dean said, starting with the _easy_ part. He felt like he was in first grade all over again, standing in the principal’s office, confessing why he had beaten up the kid from third grade. He could feel his cheeks burning now too. “Castiel thought this might come in handy in stopping Lilith from breaking the 66 seals and all, and becausemybrotherisoneofthem and Ihavetostophimortheangelswill.”

  
Bobby looked at him like he was one fuse short of a complete circuit. “Come again?”

  
Dean took a deep breath, conscious that he wasn’t really breathing air. The gesture, though, was comforting in itself. “Sam is one of the 66 seals and Castiel warned me that if I can’t stop him, they will.”

  
Bobby was stunned to silence. If they weren’t where they were and if things weren’t as bad as they were, it would’ve actually been funny. As it was, it wasn’t.

  
When Bobby’s living room started to lose some of its definition, Dean thought that maybe this was a too literal idea of the world falling apart around him.

  
Without warning, the room changed around him and, even though he had closed his eyes to resist the nausea that he was starting to associate with these transitions, Dean knew the exact instant when he was back in to his mind. And his aching body.

  
From the floor view in front of him, Dean figured that it hadn’t been just Bobby who had lost consciousness. The floor of the hotel room was covered in dust, two old condom-wrappers and, beneath the bed closest to him, Dean could see enough bugs to start a wild-life show of his own.

  
His right arm felt numb, trapped between him and the floor, the left twisted into an uncomfortable angle and resting against his back.

  
It was darker now, night fully set in, and the coldness of outside had seeped in to the room. Without the convenience of a working heater, Dean’s legs were freezing.

  
Slowly, trying to avoid the battalion of pins and needles that he knew would come barging in as soon as he moved, Dean pulled his arm from under him and pushed himself up.

  
Apparently, it wasn’t Bobby who had to wake up for him to return to his rightful place. Because Bobby was still slumped on the floor behind Dean, lying on his stomach, face lax with unconsciousness, arms pinned beneath him.

  
Ruby’s knife was nowhere to be seen.

  
For one frightening moment, Dean thought that maybe Bobby had fallen on the knife that he was holding and accidentally killed himself in the process.

  
There was no telltale blood pool and from what Dean could see of the older man’s back, he was still breathing, so Dean relaxed a bit and focused on trying to get up and get out of there.

  
The relief was short lived, however, when he heard the dip of bed springs and found out where Ruby’s knife had gone.

  
Sam, hands free of the rope that had bound them, stood from the bed and, gripping the knife tightly in his hand, stood above Bobby, determined grim face, ready to strike.

  
“Sam! Don’t!”


	9. Chapter 9

Except for a period of time that Sam would rather forget, right after Dean’s death, Sam doesn’t usually drink. Sam almost never drinks to the point of loosing perspective. When he does, it’s because he’s punishing himself for something. Or punishing others.

Since he’s the one with the killer hangover the next day, he’s not exactly sure how that works, but he’s sure he’s a pretty annoying drunk, so it must be that.

There’s something to be said about drunks… the level that their tolerance for alcohol reaches is simply amazing. On occasion, Sam wished he had one of those. Instead, he’s usually stuck with the girly jokes of not being able to hold his liquor. As if that was a priceless skill.

Bobby knew what was up with Dean and Missouri, but he wouldn’t tell him. Dean was his brother and Bobby thought that he had the right to keep whatever the hell was going on, from him.

For months the older hunter had tried to get Sam to open up to him, had tried to fill some of the void that Dean’s death had created inside Sam. But the last surviving Winchester had just shrugged all attempts away.

Sam guessed that this was Bobby’s revenge.

Bobby was not one to compromise their safety or the success of any hunt just to indulge himself. This wasn’t a hunt, but as missions went, it was the biggest they’d faced in a long time. And Bobby was offering booze.

When Bobby came out with a bottle of whiskey and suggested that they relaxed a bit while waiting on Dean, Sam figured that whatever this was, it was big.

If Dean came back and announced that he was switching sexes and changing his name to Darlene, Sam would not be surprised.

It felt that big.

So, Sam drank. And yapped about being treated like a five year old to whom no one ever told anything. It was a speech that sounded whiney, even to his drunken ears. But that was the kind of drunk he was; annoying and whiney.

Sloppy too, Sam mentally added for future reference, as he watched the golden liquid slosh and spill from his full glass when he made a too wide gesture with his arm.

Bobby didn’t say much, but the more Sam drank, the bigger the satisfied smile on Bobby’s face grew.

Sam figured that something was wrong when, by their second bottle, Sam was seeing two Bobbies and, despite the older man having drunk more than him, both Bobbies were perfectly sober.

That wasn’t Bobby.

Sam’s addled mind tried to come up with reasonable options to what this thing seating across from him could be. His first option was demon, but he knew how good Bobby’s charms to fend off possession were. He and Dean had trusted in the man’s ability to find the best protections, enough to get the symbols tattooed in to their skin.

Maybe he was shapeshifter… or a revenant… or an evil twin… or maybe he was getting drunk and paranoid at the same time.

And yet…

Ever since he had allowed Ruby to teach him to use his powers, Sam felt a strange tingling inside his bones whenever he was near a demon. Something that he could only describe as a fizz vibe, like carbon gas escaping a liquid drink.

Even with the all the alcohol in his blood, numbing all of his other senses, that feeling was still there, crystal clear.

Sam had to be sure. He just had to know.

“Crrr… Cwiistou!” Sam said, hoping that the slur was close enough for effect.

The chuckle that escape the demon inside Bobby as his eyes turned black told Sam that the reveal was more out of boredom on the demon’s part than actual compulsion in answer to the powerful word.

“Took you long enough, boy! Everyone has you pegged as being smarter than this, you know?”

Suddenly, the world was tilting dizzily around Sam, the sense weightlessness turning his stomach upside down and bounce around at the same time. Realizing he was airborne, he slammed his eyes shut, bracing for impact. He gasped when he felt a soft cushioning underneath him, and the world settling, confused for a second as to why there was no pain upon landing.

Sam looked around, recognizing the rumpled purple bedspread as is own bed. Bobby, or rather the thing inside Bobby, was still seated at the table, like it was none of his business. Or that it hadn’t been responsible for the seven feet that Sam just flew.

Dean had Ruby’s knife with him. These days he never parted with the thing, as if expecting a demon at every corner. Sam hadn’t really cared because he had his own kind of weapons to defend himself. Even if he did have it with him, Sam wasn’t sure he could bring himself to use the knife on Bobby.

Reacting like it was a second nature to him, Sam extended his arm, the palm of his right hand outward, toward Bobby.

Ruby had laughed her demonic ass off when she saw him do it the first time, explaining that he didn’t needed the choreography. It was just a matter of getting his mind in the right place.

After the first couple of disastrous attempts at exorcising demons with his power, Sam figured that, ridiculous or not, the hand thing helped him focus.

He did not wanted to hurt Bobby, but he needed to act fast. Dean would be coming back anytime now, and even if it were the last thing he ever did, he would not let any Hell spawn hurt his brother ever again.

It was like the past four months had never happened.

The will to force a demon out of someone, something that Sam could now do with almost no thought behind it, wasn’t coming. That part of his mind that Sam had to access to unleash his power was gone, numb. Powerless.

The demon chuckled, getting up from his chair. “Doesn’t work so good when you’re drunk, does it?”

Sam just tries harder, because what good would it be to risk losing himself in Azazel’s given powers when such powers failed him when he needed them the most?

The trickle of blood running down his nose went unnoticed as Sam focused instead on the demon, slowly walking towards the bed. Teasing him.

“Look at you now… all powerless and defenseless,” the demon said as he began searching the bags lying on the other bed. “Bet you’re hoping your big brother comes rushing through that door to rescue you now… or better yet, Ruby.”

Sam lowered his hand and gripped his head instead. It felt like his skull was about to crack open and spill his brains all over the room. He could barely hear the demon’s baiting over the roar in his ears.

“You and your private bitch demon have been such a juicy bit of gossip by the demon’s water cooler that I’m almost disappointed that she’s not here with you,” not-Bobby said, producing a piece of rope from Bobby’s duffel. “But then again, your brother and Bobby are still in the dark about that particularly nasty piece of development, aren’t they?”

Sam kept silent, watching as the demon bound his hands behind his back and pushed him back to the bed, banging his head against the hard wood headboard. The world spun crazily around before fading to black for a few seconds.

When the youngest Winchester looked around again, the demon was back at the table, waiting.

“Don’t worry Sammy-boy… your brother will be here to rescue you in no time,” it said, taking a small knife from one of Bobby’s pockets and picking his nails with it. “In fact, I’m counting on it. Lilith’s been missing him terribly.”

Despite his struggle to keep his eyes opened and his mind working on the matter of freeing his hands and getting that demon out of Bobby, Sam fell in to a drunken sleep, feverish dreams of killing Bobby or watching Bobby kill them, running non-stop through his mind.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Thump. Thump. Thump. THUMP!

The louder bang of something hitting the wall did no favors to the splitting headache that Sam was trying, and failing, to ignore.

The smell was familiar, that odd mixture of disinfectant and old booze that screamed the same no matter where you were.

Sam could vaguely remember checking in to a motel room but that, given his lifestyle, didn’t help him much. What he did know was that something was wrong. Deadly wrong.

There was this sense of doom and impending death centered on Bobby that was oppressing his heart, but Sam couldn’t really remember why. And then there was the fact that, even though they hurt like a bitch, he couldn’t move his arms from the awkward position that they were in. These were not good signs in the Winchester book of crap.

Cracking his eyes open just a slit, knowing that any light from outside would just fuel the already nasty pounding in his head, Sam looked ahead.

There was an unimpressive wall of dirty white paint and something blue that soon focused enough to be translated as a pair of jean clad long legs.

The wear and tear of the plain brown leather belt felt familiar, as did those jeans with the tear at knee high so big that he could see the bony knee underneath.

Dean.

Now that he knew his brother was there, it made sense why he kept hearing Dean’s voice calling his name, even if, for now, Dean was just a jeans’ clad knee.

“Dween?” Funny, that had sounded right in his head, but had come out a bit weird.

Wasting a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out why his mouth was rebelling against his brain and why Bobby was laughing about that, unconsciousness claimed Sam once again.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

It was a strange feeling to keep losing huge chunks of time like that but, if the thing that had crawled in to his mouth to die and his head were any indication, Sam was sure that somewhere along the line there was alcohol involved and that it was probably Dean’s fault.

Sam knew how he was when he drank, and he knew what the price to pay the next day was. Still, he had apparently let his brother drag him out to ‘unwind’ in some cheesy bar. Again.

Oddly enough, it didn’t felt like the next day.

It was dark outside, for one. He remembered coming to the room sometime after lunch. It should be brighter outside, like dawn-of-a-new-day brighter.

The room was silent. Not peaceful silent… eerie silent, like sound had been rendered non-existent.

The image of Bobby’s grey eyes turning oil black was suddenly very clear in Sam’s addled mind. Bobby had been possessed, he had been overpowered and Dean was about to walk in to a trap.

Turning around, Sam couldn’t see anyone else in the room. He was almost sure that he’d seen Dean there before… or at least he remembered Dean’s knee.

Sam’s heart started pounding inside his chest in tempo with his head, thoughts of Dean back in Lilith’s hands, him and Bobby being forced to witness whatever that bitch had planned for his brother.

Fingering the knots of the rope he could feel tied around his wrists, Sam rolled onto his side and pushed himself up using his right elbow. There had to be something in that room that he could use to cut that damn rope. And then he could panic about Dean’s whereabouts.

The second his boot clad feet hit the floor, Sam knew that he wouldn’t have to search far for his brother.

His breath caught in his throat, Sam looked at the two bodies lying on the small space between the bed and the wall. The demon was on his stomach, apparently incapacitated for the moment and Dean… Dean was a mess.

Alive, or so Sam could gather from the quiet movements up and down of his turned back, but a mess still.

At first glance, Sam could see the blood on his forehead and neck, still slowly seeping in to the grey carpet, drops of deep red soaking in to the fibers and turning them the color of rich red wine.

Dean’s pants were down and there was blood pooling beneath his left leg. Sam broke in to a cold sweat, franticly searching for something with which to free his hands. He fought a sudden urge to call out to his brother, get his attention so that he would turn around, to make sure he was alright.

He kept quiet, afraid to attract the demon’s attention instead.

Ruby’s knife glinted from the floor, like a bright beacon, discarded near Bobby’s head.

Sam jumped from the bed, the adrenaline cursing through his veins, clearing his mind from the remains of the whiskey. His concern for what was now happening enough for him to ignore the spinning and nausea that the sudden movements caused.

Hands still tied behind his back, it took some contorting of his tall frame to lean down, grab the blade from the floor and maneuver it to the rope behind him. But after some cursing and some finger fumbling, Sam gasped in relief when he felt the knife handle precariously gripped between two fingers.

Dropping back on his stomach against the bed, Sam worked feverishly to maintain a steady back and forth, back and forth motion, sawing into the ropes, at the same time keeping one eye on the demon and the other on his brother.

Now that he was focusing on details and not on the general, rushed view, Sam could take a better look at Dean’s face. Under the smudges of dried and fresh blood, his brother was pale and sweaty and… Sam could’ve sworn that his lips were moving, like he was talking to someone, the sound cut off like in a silent movie.

When the rope finally gave way with a humph of defeat, falling to the bed sheets, Sam jumped off the bed, springs bolting and singing against his weight.

Sam knew that, whatever had happen to render the demon unconscious, would not last. He had a split second to decide what to do.

The weight of Ruby’s knife on his hand was burden with guilt, because Sam knew it was the sure way to finish the demon and help his brother. It was also a way that left Bobby’ survival out of the question.

There was no time to draw devil’s traps; there were no ropes that would hold a demon still until he read a whole exorcism ritual.

Or he could try exorcising the demon with his mind again. From the way his head was feeling, Sam figured that he would have as much success now as he had had before. He could not afford to make the same mistake twice. Not with his brother bleeding all over the floor.

Knowing… hoping that Bobby would understand his decision, Sam advanced resolute towards the fallen demon. It had to be done… there was no other way.

“Sam! Don’t!”

So focused he’d been on the demon, that Sam failed to see his brother starting to stir and move. Even though relief flooded like cool water over Sam’s tired body, he didn’t move from his position. He knew that Dean would try to plead with him, but Sam knew that once one demon knew where they were, they all knew. They could not take the risk of staying too long in the same place.

“Sam, please… listen to me: that’s Bobby!”

Sam looked at his brother pleading face, his memory taking him against his will to another time, to another version of a bloodied Dean, pleading for the life of another possessed man. Pleading for the life of their father.

If only Sam had been brave enough to pull the trigger there and then, in that abandoned cabin, far from civilization and regret…

“He’s possessed, Dean,” Sam argued, knowing that to his brother, that was a poor argument.

Dean struggled to get up and physically pry the blade from Sam’s hands.

“Not anymore… he’s just Bobby now.”

“That’s impossible,” Sam half sobbed. He remembered Bobby’s eyes turning black. He remembered his promises to deliver Dean to Lilith.

Why was Dean trying to trick him? Couldn’t he see the danger they were in if that demon woke up now?

“Do whatever you want to test it, but this,” Dean said, finally on his feet even if he swayed from side to side, “this is Bobby... trust me.”

Sam’s grip on the knife just grew tighter. Something was off.

“So, even though he was winning, the demon decided to go? That he had more important things to do?” Sam asked doubtfully. The way his brother had been slumped on the floor, it didn’t look like a battle that he had won. “Or did you just exorcize him when he had you trapped against the wall? Stood very still while you recited all that Latin that you still don’t know by heart?”

Dean looked embarrassed for some reason that Sam could not understand.

“Something like that… bottom line, Sam, is that Bobby is demon free, so don’t go making new holes on the man,” Dean said without meeting Sam’s eyes as he busied himself pulling his jeans up.

When Sam still didn’t move from his attack position, Dean looked up again.

“Sam?”

“Did you exorcize Bobby?” Sam asked very slowly. There was no such thing as a ‘sort of’ or ‘kind of’ or ‘almost’ exorcism. Dean knew that. So why was he being so evasive about this?

The sudden suspicion that the demon had jumped from Bobby to Dean made Sam’ stomach roll. He took one step away from Bobby, eyeing his brother’s every movement, looking for some give away that Dean was not Dean.

“I’m not a demon, Sam,” Dean said in annoyance, his face coloring bright red the second the words left his mouth.

The mind reading thing was a dead give away for Sam. Only demons could do that.

“Like hell you’re not!” Sam said, moving towards Dean, one hand around his brother’s bloody throat, the other hanging limply by his side, holding the knife.

Sam pushed his brother’s unresisting body against the plaster wall, the sickening sound of head meeting wall bringing bile to his mouth. Sam needed the demon to show itself, to provoke it in to action because, if Sam thought that the idea of stabbing Bobby was hard, the idea of doing the same to Dean was unbearable.

“Sam… Sammy, what are you doing?”

Dean’s voice was calm, smoothing, like he was talking to a mad man. The demon wasn’t that far off from the truth.

“Cristo!” Sam yelled in his brother’s face, gazing at the familiar green eyes and waiting for them to turn black.

Nothing happen.

“Happy now?” Dean asked, still not struggling, even as his face kept steadily turning slightly redder from the pressure on his throat. “The demon’s long gone and we need to hightail out of here before his buddies show up.”

“How?”

How did you managed to exorcize the demon?

How did you know what I was thinking?

How can you be so calm when I was seconds away from killing you?

Dean had no time to answer him as their attention was diverted to the front door. One swift kick and Ruby’s figure stood in the doorway, brown hair ruffled from the wind outside.

“Did I miss all the fun?”

“Ruby,” Sam whispered in relief, forgetting for the moment that Dean didn’t even know that she was back from Hell too. All that Sam could think of was that she could see for sure who was a demon and who wasn’t.

“You can drop your brother, Sam… the demon is gone.”

“You sure about that?” Dean growled, his voice suddenly stronger.

The sarcastic reply brought Sam’s illusions crashing back to earth. He released his brother’s neck, wincing at the redness that he had added there.

“Dean… I can explain this,” Sam said, hating the fact that he sounded like he was five all over again.

“Don’t bother… I already knew,” Dean said tiredly. “I know everything, Sam.”

Sam should’ve been surprised by the confession. After all, he had been extra careful with his extra curricular activities ever since Dean’s return. But no… it was the tone of voice that his brother had used that truly surprised Sam.

Rather than acting smugly like Dean would’ve been, rubbing Sam’s most treasured secret in his face, Dean had sounded defeated… guilty.

Sam was the one who should’ve been feeling guilty. He was the one who had been fooling his own brother for this long.

Unless he wasn’t the only one doing the fooling…

Sam looked in to his brother’s eyes, trapping Dean between him and the wall with nothing but the weight of his gaze and the couple of inches he had on his brother. Dean had always been a great liar but his eyes were not his best tool. They were too honest, too open, too explicit.

It was all there, plain to see in the green and gold. Sam just hadn’t gone to the trouble of seeing it before.

Dean had as many dark secrets as he had.

“If you two love birds are quite done with the eye-fuck, you think we can get out of here now?” Ruby’s crass voice broke the spell.

The moment Sam wasted throwing a warning glance to Ruby, Dean had diverted his eyes to the floor, ignoring her and focusing on Bobby instead.

“We should see how he’s doing,” Dean said as he knelt down beside the unconscious hunter.

“Sam…”

Ruby was quietly urging him to listen to her, to do as she advised. It was the same tone of voice she used whenever he was reluctant about using his powers, or when he refused to hurt a possessed human even though he knew that demons rode them until they dropped dead. It was a tone of voice that, as he had learned the hard way, meant that, even though he didn’t like it, Ruby was right.

Dean was gently tapping Bobby’s face, urging the man to wake up. It wasn’t lost on Sam that his brother hadn’t even taken the time to see if the older man was in fact injured or just asleep… like he knew what was wrong with Bobby.

“She’s right… let’s just carry him to the car,” Sam said, kneeling beside Dean and grabbing Bobby’s legs. Dean’s hand on his arm stopped him.

“She’s not going with us,” Dean said. Commanded, actually.

“’She’ is standing right here, you know?” Ruby huffed from the corner of the bed where she sat.

The look that Dean gave her was… odd.

Sam was used to the murderous looks that Dean often threw Ruby, at least the blond version of Ruby. Heck! He was even used to his brother acting on those murderous glares and actually taking a swing or a shot at Ruby. This was different though.

Dean was looking at her almost in the same way he had in those last few hours before he died. Dean was looking at her like he was seeing more than a short, sassy brunette.

“She can help us,” Sam tried. If his brother could get past the ‘demon’ thing, he would probably see Ruby for the asset she was in their fight.

“She’s tricking you,” Dean said. “You can’t trust her!”

Again, Dean’s voice was wrong. Yes, the words were exactly what Sam would’ve expected from him, but the way he said them… it wasn’t as if he was stating a suspicion, it was like he was stating a fact. Like Dean had just realized that he was right.

“How can you be so sure of that?”

Dean was still looking at Ruby, who in return, looked right back at him, curiosity written all over her face. She knew Sam well enough to know he trusted her. Dean she might’ve not known as well, but his behavior was intriguing her too.

“She… her…” Dean let his head hung against his chest. When he gazed back up, his eyes looked tired and old. “I’m your brother, Sam… can’t you just trust me when I tell you that a demon is using you, tricking you?”

“Sam… we don’t have time for this!” Ruby urged him to make a decision.

If Ruby had wanted something from him, she’d had too many months at her disposal when Sam would have made no objections, when Sam wouldn’t even raise a finger if she wanted to kill him. And as for his powers, Ruby knew that he was now good enough to send her back to Hell if he wanted to. She wouldn’t dare cross him now.

No, this was just Dean distrusting Ruby because of something she couldn’t help being. Like Sam couldn’t change what he was.

“She’s coming with us, Dean… she can help us with Lilith,” Sam said, his decision finally made. He just wished that Ruby would make things easier and wiped that smug smile off her face.

“Damn it, Sam! She’s working for her! She’s one of Lilith’s bitches!”

Sam dropped Bobby’s legs, eliciting a soft moan out of the unconscious man. Was Dean really that desperate to get him away from Ruby?

“What?”

“Ruby, man… she swore her loyalty to Lilith when she was down there… she’s working for her now,” Dean said, the honesty on his face painful to see.

His brother was one terrific actor. Sam was not going to be fooled by his act.

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Because I can hear the thoughts of the girl she’s possessing, ok?” Dean said in an outburst of sound. For a second, Sam could see that this was not something that his brother wanted to confess but was too late to help it now.

“I can hear her begging for help, Sam…” Dean went on, as if a lid had been cracked open and he could no longer stop the contents from spilling. “I can hear her warnings about Ruby… I can hear everything…”

Sam got up. He couldn’t believe his own ears. And yet, it all made much more sense now.

“How… how long? How?”

There were too many questions inside Sam’s head, all pushing for his attention, all demanding answers. This was Dean, his brother, his connection with normal and human… and he was a freak just like him?

“A couple of days. Castiel… he…” Dean stuttered.

Dean never stuttered. Unless he was embarrassed about something or lying about something that he didn’t want Sam to know.

And an embarrassed Dean, rare event as it was, usually involved a blushing Dean, not a pale faced one like he was now.

“Castiel? Castiel! That’s how you knew about Ruby… about me using my powers?”

Even if Dean hadn’t nodded in agreement, Sam knew that he was right. This was what Dean had been truly hiding.

“So an angel gave you this power to what? Spy on me… spy on your own brother?”

“What? No!... Sam, don’t turn this in to something it’s not,” Dean pleaded.

Sam wanted to believe his brother, he wanted to trust Dean in the same way that he had his whole life, but this was not the same man that Sam had known his whole life.

The Dean that had returned from Hell was not the same Dean who used to fix his breakfast before he went to school, was not the same man that Sam respected like a father.

The only thing that Sam could think of was the sleepless nights that he had spent worried about how to tell Dean about Ruby and his powers, how to make his brother understand what he was doing and, especially, why he was doing it.

And all that time, Dean was probably listening in… invading his thoughts, taking advantage of Sam’s ignorance and hiding his own game. Searching his mind for dark secrets that he could tell Castiel.

Dean knew that Sam was feeling miserable with all of this and he did nothing to stop it. How could he climb on his high horse and say anything about him or Ruby?

“Sam…” Dean interrupted his internal battle. “Whatever you think of me right now, this is not the time. Ruby is playing you and-”

“And you’re not?” Sam’s question dripped with venom and hurt. “C’mon Dean, can’t you tell what I’m really thinking right now? Can you feel how betrayed I feel?”

Right now, Sam really didn’t care for the defeated look on his brother’s face or the way his eyes were glistening with unshed tears. Right now he just wanted to get out of there and NOT see Dean.

What is it they say? Better the devil you know?

Well, that certainly applied to his life right now. Even God had given up on him.

“Did he tell you that you might have to kill me, Dean?” Sam asked quietly, eyes hard and cold and wet, taking secret pleasure in the pain he knew those words would cause. “Did Castiel told you to kill me, like dad did? Is that the big mission that God wants from you?”

Dean looked too miserable to form any words, his face looking down as a stray tear escaped his eyes and ran down his cheek. Sam’s heart twisted inside his heart, conditioned response to seeing his brother looking so lost and sad.

Sam just couldn’t figure if what he was seeing was because of the harshness of his words or because he had actually guessed Castiel’s proposal.

The Dean of before, the Dean that went to Hell for him, that Dean had been certain that, despite what their father had said, he would never kill his own brother. That Dean Sam could trust.

The Dean that had return from Hell was a stranger to him. This Dean could very possibly believe that he was doing Sam a favor by killing him and, therefore, save his soul before he could damn himself.

That was a risk that, no matter how much he loved his brother, Sam could not take.

Sam had to look away, keep his brother only visible in his periphery before he crumbled and couldn’t get the words he needed to say, out. “I need some time alone to digest this, Dean, so just… please, don’t follow us.”

The look of surprise in Dean’s face was almost comical. After all the crap that Sam had dealt with because of his powers, did Dean truly believe that Sam was going to forgive him this?

“No!” Dean shouted, climbing to his feet. “Sam… she’s…” He looked like he was ready to grab Sam and tie him to a chair if that’s what it took to get him to stay.

“She’s evil, I know,” Sam finished, glad that Ruby was wisely keeping her mouth shut through all of this. “But she’s an evil that I can deal with right now and, frankly, she understand me better than you do on this… she understands why I have to use my powers and you… you couldn’t even confess to yours.”

Dean took a couple of steps in Sam’s direction, his eyes hard as steel. Dean on a mission.

“I can’t let you leave with her, Sam. You might not believe me, but I’m telling you the truth about her intentions… you can’t blindly follow her like that! I won’t let you!”

Sam didn’t realize that he’d been the one doing it, until he looked from his brother’s still figure, pressed against the wall, to his extended hand.

That had never happened before, but then again, Dean seemed to bring out the worst of his powers to the forefront. This was what he now was. Might as well show all of his cards to Dean and let him deal with it.

“How are you going to stop me?” Sam asked, echoing the same words he’d said to Dean when he’d gone after that Frankenstein doctor.

The look of fear and despair in Dean’s face still had the power to make Sam’s stomach turn. He had done that. He had put that look in his brother’s eyes.

“Sam, we have to go…” Ruby interrupted. “Lilith’s goons will sense your presence here… the farther you are, the safer they’ll be,” She placed a calming hand on his shoulder.

Like doc Benton, he was the monster here. Despite everything, Dean and Bobby would be safer without him.

“Don’t think like that… you’re not a monster, you’re my brother, Sam,” Dean said, no longer pretending that he was not spying on Sam’s every thought. “Please don’t do this.”

Sam raised his hand once again, spreading his fingers to send more pressure, pushing Dean harder, enough to steal the breathe from his lungs and make him shut up but not harm him.

“Stay out of my head… and stay out of my life. This is my problem now,” Sam whispered, taking one last look at his brother.

If Heaven thought him dangerous enough to have his own brother spy on him, then Sam was probably better off staying away from Dean. And he had Lilith do deal with. Mind reading power or not, Dean and Bobby wouldn’t stand a chance against her. Sam did. And he would do that for them.

The sound of the door banging as Sam left with Ruby was not enough to cover the sobbed whisper of ‘_Sam_’ that followed him outside.

And if Sam weren’t so focused on the brother that he was leaving behind, he would’ve probably noticed the satisfied smile that crossed Ruby’s face.


	10. Chapter 10

What he had first assumed to be a heavy metal band playing in the next room, turned out to be his head trying to double as a drum.  
 

Bobby had half expected to open his eyes and meet a crowd of screaming teens, but in the gloomy lit room, the only one he could see was Dean, seated against the wall near him, hands in his lap, eyes closed. His cheeks were wet, glistening with something that could be either blood or tears. Bobby couldn’t really tell from his position on the floor.

  
“Dean," Bobby called out, slowly getting up on his ass. Everything was popping and felt rusty, like he hadn’t move a joint in ten years. Even his voice was complaining. He cleared his throat. “Where’s Sam?”

  
Dean’s breathe hitched and he carefully cracked his eyes open. The look that he gave Bobby broke the older man’s heart.

“I fucked up, Bobby… this time I really fucked up.”

  
Last thing that Bobby could remember was some crazy-assed dream of talking with Dean in the living room of his house… no, that wasn’t right. He remembered being possessed. He remembered getting Sam drunk and hurting Dean… no, that wasn’t right either… the demon, the demon had done those things.

  
The notion of asking Dean if he was ok seemed ridiculous all of a sudden. He could clearly hear and see that the boy was far from that.

“What the hell happened here?” Bobby asked instead, slowly making his way to lean against the wall near Dean.

  
Shoulder to shoulder, Bobby could feel the shivers cursing through the young hunter’s body.

  
“Sam found out… Ruby is working for Lilith… I tried to stop him… just made everything worse!”

  
Bobby tried to make heads and tails of the disjointed speech that he was being fed. He gave up when he realized that he had too many pieces missing. His own mind was still coming to grips with the whole being possessed thing. And now, apparently, the shit had hit the fan when he wasn’t even looking.

“What the hell are you talking about boy? You ain’t making a lick of sense,” Bobby said, the stern words soften down by the gentle tone.

  
The demon was gone, that part Bobby was sure of. And somehow, Dean had gotten inside his head and the two of them had actually managed to exorcise the damn thing. Honestly, he had never heard of anything like that.

  
Distracted by his own thoughts, Bobby missed the moment when Dean reached for his hand.

  
“Let me show you,” the younger hunter said. “It’s just faster that way… if I do it right…”

  
Bobby was confused by what he meant until Dean actually grabbed his hand and the whole dark room faded in to better lit version of it, where he could see everything that went on when he was still out.

  
The older hunter could see, as well as feel the emotions running through Dean’s chest as, first, he let slip that he could read thoughts, at Sam’ suspicions of him actually being a demon, of Sam… pushing his brother against a wall, like countless demons did before, choosing Ruby and walking away with her. “Oh… Dean-”

  
“We have to go after them Bobby…" Dean said hoarsely, the vision dissipating before the old hunter's eyes and the darkness returning. He stared anxiously once again into the wounded eyes of the eldest Winchester. “Ruby is walking him right in to Lilith’s hands and Sam’s too pissed at me to notice the trap. We-”

  
“We need to take care of you first and then we’ll go after them,” Bobby finally said, having regained some of his footing, a bit lost in between what Dean had shown him and the fact that Dean _could_ show him his memories. He decided that it was best to keep to familiar grounds for now, take care of the things that he could actually solve first. Like the bleeding gashes that he remember putting in Dean’s arm and leg.

  
“I’m going to get the first aid kit from the car and you,” he said, not giving the younger man a chance to fight him on this, “are gonna stay put right there.”

  
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

  
The fresh air of outside felt like a gulp of cold water to a thirsty man, the clear feeling of smoothness traveling from his mouth to his lungs. Bobby hadn’t realized how charged that room was until he had exited it.

  
He knew that he was going to have a hard time convincing Dean to use his head on the matter of Sam running off hot-headed, but he'd be dammed if he would risk losing both boys again. Over the years, too many to count, he'd grown very fond of these boys and his old heart couldn't take much more of this crap. First John disappears, then gets possessed, then dies; then Sam disappears, gets possessed and then dies too… and Dean just went straight up and died, after selling his soul, of course. There was a nasty pattern forming here, and Bobby was hell bent on breaking it even if it was the last thing he ever did.

  
The sight of both his car and the Impala with their tires slashed just made Bobby want to release a big fuck in to the night air. How the hell were they supposed to get to Chicago with no tires?

  
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

  
“We are not going to steal a car from the parking lot, Dean,” Bobby said, dabbing gauze in their very own mixture of hydrogen peroxide and holy water, and holding against the worst of the cuts in Dean’s leg. They took no chances when dealing with demon inflicted wounds, even if it stung like a bitch.

  
Still, from the way Dean was fuming at his words, Bobby figured that the burning sensation hadn’t even registered on the young man. “This needs stitches… Last thing we need is the cops on our tail because some Sunday driver lost his Pinto. Now, sit still and hold your leg up so I can sew this mess.”

  
The mess that he had made.

  
It was hard for the older hunter to be mending what he had- what the demon using him- had broken, but Bobby figured that it was his penitence for allowing himself to be possessed.

  
“And if you don’t stow that crap right there, I’m dropping your ass right here and going by myself,” Dean mumbled.

  
Bobby cursed at that. He’d forgotten Dean could do that now. “Guess I have to be careful with what I think around you now, huh?”

  
“Well, just don’t think it so loud and we’ll be fine,” Dean said, holding the edges of the larger cut together so Bobby could thread the needle through the reddened flesh. “We shouldn’t be wasting time with this Bobby… couple of butterflies and I'd be fine.”

  
“Well, you might be mister superman, but I need to do this,” Bobby grumbled, not meeting the other man’s eyes. “Besides, switching the good tires from my car to yours is a two men job and I need you able and ready to help.”

  
“God, Bobby… you made it sound like all the tires were busted,” Dean said, starting to move up. “Come on; let’s get a start on it.”

  
Bobby shook his head. “And that’s exactly why I didn’t mentioned it bef-”

  
“You mustn’t go to Chicago.”

  
Dean almost jumped up, more surprised by the actual words than the voice that had uttered them. He was growing use to the angel’s dramatic entrances.

  
“Castiel… always to the point,” Dean greeted him. By his side, he could feel Bobby tensing up. The last encountered between those two hadn’t ended that well for the older hunter. “Why the fuck shouldn’t I go? You’re the one who gave me that that information to start with, remember?”

  
“Things have… changed,” Castiel said, his tone thoughtful as if he too couldn’t understand how they have arrived at this crossroad. “At this point, going to Chicago is to do exactly what Lilith wants. She knows your brother is on his way… this is a trap for you both.”

  
“Fuck if I care,” Dean said, getting up from the bed, half-bandaged arm dragging white gauze behind it like a dirty banner and needle, still hanging by its thread, dangling from his leg. In his boxers, with smears of blood still decorating his face and body, Dean looked like a ad to bad doctoring... or an extra in some really bad porn.

  
Castiel sighed. It was impossible to know if it was Dean’s language or his attitude that was wearing the angel’s patience thin. “You should care. It is not only your life and the life of your brother that are at stake here. You shouldn’t be this selfish.”

  
Even Bobby looked surprised at the words coming out from the angel’s mouth. He was about to explain to Castiel the exact meaning of ‘selfish’ when Dean cut ahead of him and did it himself.

  
“Selfish? Trying to prevent my only brother, my only LIVING FAMILY from walking into a trap? That's selfish?”

  
Castiel seemed unfazed by Dean’s angry words. “It is, when you know the repercussions of your actions and still ignore them,” he quietly said, his calm voice doing more to deflate  
Dean’s anger than any other speech could. "It is both selfish and childish."

  
“So you got your hands on some crystal balls now too? You can tell the future as well as you can play with the past?” The sarcasm dripped like melting ice.

  
“I don’t need divination powers to see the obvious,” Castiel said and for a second, Dean could swear that the angel had already mastered the use of sarcasm himself. "The seals must not-"

  
“Fuck the damn seals! And how can you be so sure that Sam won’t…” Dean swallowed, the words still too big and heavy to pass through his throat. “…that Sam won’t kill himself anyway if I’m not there to stop him?”

  
“Because Lilith will make sure that Sam kills you the minute you step inside that warehouse,” Castiel shot back. The words had the same effect of a dagger and Dean recoiled as they found their target. But the angel continued, undaunted, “Lilith has always known that you were the fastest way to get what she wanted from Sam… and now that she has him in her hands, now that the power to break that seal so easily is at her reach... you can rest assure that she will have a plan to get exactly what she wants.”

  
At that last statement, Dean's eyes slam shut and he mutters a quiet curse. That last bit? Well, that was the last thing that he had wanted Bobby finding out; Bobby was a practical guy and knew how to look at the big picture, like Castiel was always telling him to do. He didn't want Bobby thinking of Sam as a target.

  
For the second time that evening, Dean was left speechless. He sagged back down on the bed, head bowed and hands hanging limply from his lap, waiting. Dean wasn’t going to like Bobby’s reaction to this. He could already hear the engines inside the older man's head turning.

  
“They both need to die for the seal to break?” Bobby asked, but the question, all the questions that Dean figured Bobby would be asking, wasn’t directed at him.

  
“Sam must not be allowed to take his life for the love of another… that is what the seal says... that is what the seal is,” Castiel confirmed, directing his attention to the older hunter, instinctively knowing that Dean needed time to regroup. “The breaking of this seal must be prevented at all cost.”

  
Dean looked up at that, not liking the implications of having ‘his’ angel talking like that to someone else. Talking like he was giving Bobby a mission of his own. There were enough people already willing to kill his brother.

  
“You and your ‘brothers’ have fucked up enough seals already… why not let this one slide as well?” Dean asked, knowing that the words were harmful but not really caring at the moment.

  
Castiel flinched, just as Dean hoped he would. When he talked though, his voice mirrored  
none of the emotions that both humans had seen running through his eyes. “Some seals are more important than others… some seals are so important that we had to break some on our own to assure their safety.”

  
“What are you talking about?”

  
“Raising you from perdition… it was a risk, but one that was deemed worthy of taking.”

  
“Wait a minute," Dean stared, not believing what he just heard. "You saying that getting me out of Hell was another of the seals?” Just when he thought that things couldn’t get much worse. “But Lilith didn’t break that one, did she?”

  
“No, she didn’t. I did. It was the first one, actually,” Castiel confessed.

  
“The broken statue," Bobby whispers audibly, "the one with the angel raising a man from his tomb, she was sending a message to you, wasn’t she?” It had always intrigued him as to why Lilith had taken the trouble of going around the world, breaking ancient tombs.

  
The angel nodded, his usually solemn face more grim than ever. He was not happy to be doing Lilith's work for her, but it couldn’t be helped. “_The soul of a mortal man shall be raised from the flames of Hell before Hell's lord himself can rise as wel_l,” Castiel said, sounding like he was quoting some ancient text that he’d memorized. He probably was.

  
“Well, I certainly didn’t ask for that…” Dean said as he grabbed his discarded shirt, getting dressed with jerky, short, angry movements. Furious wasn’t quite enough to describe his state of mind just then. “Why? Why me? Why Sam? What the hell did we do to deserve all of this?”

  
Castiel pressed his lips together, like he was physically stopping himself from saying something else. How far was the line between saying enough to reassure his young charge and saying too much that would only serve to upset him even further? Castiel guessed that the exact same words would succeed in accomplishing both.

  
He could feel Dean's awkward attempts at reading his mind, but that was a fact that did not concern him. The most he would be able to find out was that his inhabited vessel had a growing concern for his unfed fishes.

  
“You should rest,” Castiel said, taking in the dark smudges under the man’s eyes and the sick pallor of his skin. “You’ll think more clearly when you’re rested.”

  
"No time for that..." Dean shook his head, regretting the slight motion as it awakened white sparks of light in his eyes. Turns out getting inside someone’s head and performing an exorcism was quite taxing. “Sam and Ruby are probably half way through to Chicago already. We need to leave, now!”

  
Although he was perfectly aware of how quietly and fast Castiel could move, it still surprised Dean when he looked up from buttoning up his shirt and found the angel inches away from him. There was no time to flinch away and before he knew it, Castiel had touched his forehead and he was falling in to a deep sleep.

  
“You must win lots of arguments like that, dontcha?” Bobby snapped as he saw Dean’s body falling against the bed. “The least you could’ve done was to put him to sleep after I got him in the car.” He looked at the needle hanging from Dean's leg. "Or put some pants on, for that matter," the older man mumbled.

  
Castiel tilted his head, leaving his observation of his sleeping charge to look at the older man. “You are taking him to Chicago none the less?”

  
Bobby nodded, for a minute worried that the angel would put him to sleep too. He took a step back, just in case. “No other choice really. He won’t stay asleep forever, and you know the first thing he’ll do when he wakes up is go after his brother, so, I might as well get him there on time to actually do something.”

  
“Even knowing the risks… you still willingly take him there?”

  
“'Course I do," Bobby said with a shrug. He understood the seriousness of the matter, God! How he did... he just didn't see any other choice. He knelt down to take the needle back in hand to finish sewing the sleeping man's leg. "And so does he, make no mistake." He paused mid-stitch and fixed the angel with a serious gaze, "He’s scared shitless. You know that, right?”

  
The angel looked down. The younger hunter looked peaceful in his sleep, resting free of the worries that plagued his waking hours and the nightmares that haunted his usual sleep. “How can you tell this?” Castiel asked, genuine curiosity in his voice.

  
“He swears a lot when he’ scared. Ever since he was a kid, it was always the same thing… the bigger the fear, the dirtier the mouth." Bobby's eyes shifted, a sad smile creased the corners of his mouth. It was as if seeing some distant place, his voice drifting with him, apparently lost in some memory of a time when things were slightly easier, "Used to drive John insane whenever he got complaints from traumatized schoolteachers.” The weight of the present, though, pushed him in to more serious matters.

  
With Dean patched up and his slumber continuing, Bobby stood, gathering the refuse of his completed triage. “Don’t get me wrong when I say this, 'cause I'm really grateful to have Dean back among us a an' all, but if the risk was that big, why bring him back at all?” The question asked, he moved quickly and efficiently around the room, gathering their stuff to leave.

  
“The risk of keeping him in Hell was bigger… we needed him where we could do something for him,” Castiel said absentmindedly, sitting next to Dean. His hand reached to touch the pendent lying against the hunter’s chest, stopping just inches from touching it. “You haven’t told him yet.”

  
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Bobby answered, curious about the angel’s reaction to the golden, horned head-figure hanging from Dean’s neck and his obvious knowledge of why it was there. “But I’m really starting to wonder about the wisdom of that now. Secrets don’t tend to end well around the Winchester, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  
“Dean already knows about Mary and his grandparents… once he has the time to think about it, he’ll probably figure it out with Elkins… he still doubts himself too much though… perhaps you should make sure that that particular piece of information stays hidden from him, for now.”

  
“Before he reads it off my mind, is that what you mean?” Bobby fired back. How was supposed to do that? After all, there was only so much time that he could spend thinking of dry walls. “You know why he wears it, right?”

  
“I do.”

  
"And I bet you know the reason why too," Bobby asked, desperately trying to fish for information. For years now, he'd been curious and left to wonder about the thing that Dean's amulet shielded him from. This was as close as he'd ever gotten to an answer.

  
"I do."

  
“Not gonna share, are you?”

  
“The time is not right for that yet… he needs to remember first.”

  
“Remember? Remember what?” Bobby asked. From what he was aware, there was only one thing missing from Dean’s mind and, if you asked him, it wasn’t something he needed to remember at all. “You’re talking about his time in the pit, aren’t you?”

  
Castiel looked lost for a moment. The different ways human had to refer to the place of damnation still left him confused on occasion. He nodded when he understood that the older hunter was indeed talking about Hell.

  
“That’s a bit cruel, dontcha think?”

  
From the way Bobby said it, it was clear that he found it a lot more than ‘_a bit’_ cruel. One of his closest friends in his youth had been captured in ‘Nam and kept in a prisoner’s camp just outside Ban Nai for six whole months. Peter managed to survive, but that was all he did until the day he killed himself. The memories alone of what he’d been through during those days had haunted him the rest of his life.

  
Dean being to Hell made what Peter had gone through sound like a trip to the dentist. If there were anything he could do to keep the kid Hell-memories free, Bobby would do it.

  
“That sentiment does you justice… but there is no other choice,” Castiel said, sounding truly sorry for that. “If Dean never remembers the information that he gathered there, the suffering he went through in Hell would have been for nothing… and all will be lost.”

  
Bobby scratched his beard. The angel made it sound like the deal Dean made had nothing to do with the fact that his soul was Hell-bound. “How do you even know he has this information that you need?”

  
“Because that is what he was born to do.”

  
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

_  
Please stop._

  
The second claw drew a symmetrical path down his other shoulder blade, twin rivers of blood running down his back, cursing through the riverbeds that the muscles of his outstretched arms formed.

_  
Please… I can’t take it anymore._

The claws owner just kept on laughing, a caustic sound that burned his ears and filled him  
with shame … sadism oozed from the high pitched notes, like long fingernails on a dusty chalk-board. On and on and on and on…

_  
Please, just… just stop._

  
When the laughter stopped, he knew what would happen. They had played this game before and the end was always the same. He thought he’d died the first time it had happen, only to be brought back to face it all again.

  
How many times it happened before, he did not remember, but one thing he was certain of, this would not be the last time.

  
The claws were almost at the end of their path, the pattern design almost complete. He closed his eyes and waited for the words, the signal to free his most primal scream.

  
A presence drew near his ear, air, fetid and warm, brushing against his sweaty skin. In its wake, goose bumps rising, evidence of pure revulsion.

_  
There… I gave you your wings back._

  
The words were whispered against him, a touch of tongue mingling with the venom being poured, a distraction for when the claws started to pull.

_  
Now fly, my angel… fly once again._

  
He doesn’t know for how long he’s left there after that, hanging like a mocking parody of a displayed butterfly with bloody wings. It’s taking longer this time… it’s taking longer to stop existing and start all over again. He doesn’t know what they are waiting for. He’s not going to die… he can’t die in here and that’s part of the torture.

_ **  
Do you think he knows? Do you think he remembers?** _

  
Dean can hear the voices at a distance, whispers that are only understandable because they clash so strongly with the surrounding screams.

_  
Who cares if he does?! Lilith gave him to me to play with and I haven’t finished yet._

_ **  
He looks so pretty hanging there… let me play as well.** _

  
Dean flinches from the words, but the claws owner doesn't acknowledge him. He is nothing but meat on a hook to them. He has no eyes. He has no ears. He has no mouth. Sometimes he doesn't even have a face.

_  
You’ll have your turn… you all will have your turn._

_ **  
Don’t believe you… Lilith wants him upstairs, you know she needs him upstairs for...** _

_  
For the plan that she stole from Azazel, you mean…_

  
Time passes too slowly for him, slowly enough for him to track the path of each and every single drop of blood in his body. He can barely recall who Azazel is or why the sound of his name awakens a hatred so deep and bigger than any he's ever felt here.

_ **  
Either way… oh! Look, he’s whole again! Let me try something new…** _

_  
What do you have in mind?_

_ **  
You’ll see.. you’ll see.** _

  
Dean looked down at himself, barely recognizing the mended flesh as his own. He was so use to see the inside of his bones and the white of his skin covered in red…

  
He never saw it coming, behind him. The spear was so long that it entered him from bellow and he was still screaming when it forced its way past his tongue. Even with his vocal cords ripped apart, he still screamed…

  
0o00o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

  
“Dean…. Dean, wake up!”

  
Dean bolted upright with a start. Green eyes wide open, pupils contracting painfully hard against the light outside, his heart hammered painfully in his chest. The low roar of the engine filled his ears, familiar and oddly soothing, like the soft purr of a content cat. It was a sound that Dean knew as well as his own heartbeat. Sometimes, he wished that his heartbeat was a steady and strong as the pumping valves of the Impala’s inner workings.

  
There was a pressure on his chest and his gaze traveled to the source. Bobby's hand held tight, tendons straining, clenched around the fabric of his shirt over his heart, a warm restraint or harsh comfort. Maybe both.

  
Bobby’s other hand held the steering wheel steady as the sleek black car stayed the course. It was a strange notion to feel the car moving and not be driving. For all the times that Sam had driven the Impala, Dean always missed that feeling.

  
Sam!

  
The scenery outside moved past him in a blur of green and bright blue. Bobby was squinting against the light coming from the noon sun, both his hands now clasped around the unfamiliar wheel.

  
Bobby cast a fleeting look filled with concern for the waking young man and returned his eyes to the road. Damn angel had promise that he would get some rest. From the amount of thrashing and the sweat pooling on Dean’s forehead, Bobby figured that the last nightmare had been a nasty one.

“How’re you feeling?”

  
Dean rubbed a hand down his face, feeling the sharp sting of stubble. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had had time to shave. “He’s gone?” Dean asked, the memory of Castiel insisting that they stuck their collective heads in the sand being the last thing he remembered.

  
“Yup.”

  
“But we’re still going to Chicago?” The question wasn’t about the direction they were traveling. Dean could recognize the freeway they were on, he knew that they were twenty minutes, maybe half an hour away from Chicago. The real question was how Castiel had allowed Bobby to so blatantly disobey something that the angel was obviously extremely serious about.

  
“Yup,” Bobby said again, apparently enjoying the confusion in his passenger’s face.

  
“How?”

  
“Amazing powers of persuasion, that’s how.”

  
Bobby didn’t need to take his eyes off the road to know the size of the glare Dean was sending him. “Castiel may not know you for long, but he already knows what a big stubborn ass you are… he figured that since there was no way of talking you out of this, he might as well let me help you get there… even helped to magically change the tires and everything,” the older hunter added with a chuckle.

  
Dean seemed too lost in his own thoughts to find the humor in their private Heavenly-auto-repair. “He say anything else?”

  
“Nope”

  
Dean sat quiet for a while, just watching the blurry landscape as it rushed by his window. He loved being in his car, but only if he got to be the one behind the wheel. Sitting there in the passenger seat, with no traffic signs and crazy drivers to keep him alert – distracted - Dean had no other choice but to deal with his own thoughts. His life was just too screwed up for him to allow himself that now.

  
“Has Sam called?” But Dean already knew the answer to that one.

  
With a shake of his head, Bobby confirmed what Dean could’ve guessed. Suddenly, he placed one arm behind him to the bench seat in the back, reaching for his coat. “We should try to call him… warn him again. Maybe he’s thinking more coolly now-“

  
“Dean… I already tried. Five times. All I got was his voice mail,” Bobby explained. He knew that Sam was feeling betrayed right now, but boy! He could slap him just now.

  
Dean ran a hand through his short hair, absently rubbing the tension away from his temples before scrubbing the remains of sleep from his eyes. “God… this is like dad all over again,” he whispered, maybe only to himself.

  
Bobby heard anyway, and he couldn’t agree more. This was definitely a pattern that he didn’t like. The older man cleared his throat, eyes fixed on the slow traffic ahead. “This whole thing in Chicago… you know that Lilith is waiting for you to show up.”

  
“I know,” Dean said, distractedly biting his thumb’s nail.

  
“And you know that, no matter what happens, Sam must not be allowed to kill himself?”

  
The shiver that raced through Dean’s body in reaction to those words was strong enough to reach Bobby in the driver’ seat.

  
“He’s not a demon yet, Bobby… there’ still time to prevent that,” Dean said, his tone almost convincing. Either way, there was no way he would ever stand by and watch Sam off himself. Apocalypse or no apocalypse.

  
“He chose a demon over you... he used his powers on you,” Bobby stated the obvious, because for a smart guy, Dean lost all sense when it came to Sam. “He chose the powers that he knows are evil over his own flesh and blood… it ain’t looking good.”

  
“He was trying to protect us,” Dean reminded the older man. He knew how good Bobby was at keeping his own feelings locked away until a hunt was over. He was scary good at that.

  
“I’m just saying… how far are you prepared to go?”

  
And that was the question that had been at the back of Dean’s mind ever since Castiel had opened his mouth about Sam. His brother, or the whole of Mankind… how could he possibly choose? “I can’t kill my own brother, Bobby… I just can’t do it.”

  
It felt like a confession, even if both men inside that car had always known that that would be his answer. Bobby just wished that fate allowed Dean to respect his choice.

  
“I know you can’t… just the thought of it breaks my heart too, but,” Bobby hesitated, afraid of how his offer of doing it for Dean, if there was no other choice, would be received.

  
“Don’t,” Dean broke his train of thought and the older man once again kicked himself for forgetting that his thoughts were no longer his alone. “I’m sick and tired of having people offering themselves to kill Sam… I have to believe that we’re fighting to save him, Bobby… I gotta believe that he can be saved, or else I can’t fight anymore…”

  
Bobby chose to ignore how, at that last bit, Dean’s voice slowly turned in to a sob, concentrating instead on fighting the burn of tears in his eyes. “We have to be prepared for all possibilities," Bobby said, clearing the emotional lump from his throat. "It broke your daddy’s heart too when he found out about Sam, and the demon blood and all the writings about it…”

  
“Wait… What? Dad knew about all this?” Dean exploded from the passenger seat, turning sideways to look at the older hunter.

  
“Yeah, John knew… I knew some of it too,” Bobby confessed. “From the way you reacted when he died, I’m guessing that he asked you the same thing he asked me?”

  
“You too?” Dean's voice now was one of incredulity and shock.

  
“Why do ya think I chased your father away at buck shot point? Man comes into my house and tells me that he found some stuff and that, if anything ever happened to him or you, I would have to take care of Sam…” Bobby said, the memory alone painful to him.

  
Those had been dark times, when John and his boys just disappeared from circulation. Bobby had spent too many sleepless nights wondering if he had made the right decision in keeping John, given his tenuous state of mind, away from him. How he had feared for those boys then. The news that Sam had gone away to college were actually some of the best that Bobby ever heard… until he saw the effects that had on Dean and his father.

  
“How? How could he know?”

  
“Your father was a damn good hunter, boy,” Bobby reminded him. Despite the fact that Dean knew that, he didn’t seemed convinced. “Elkins,” he ended up confessing. Might as well come clean on it.

  
“Elkins? Daniel Elkins?” Dean said, swallowing an uncomfortable lump in his throat. In a manner of speaking, he’d just been with the man only a few days ago. “How could Elkins know?”

  
Bobby looked alarmed for a few seconds, looking sideways at Dean, searching his face for some sort of clue that he hadn’t said too much too soon. “It’s already happened, right?” He hadn’t misunderstood Castiel’s words, right?

  
Dean sat back straight in his seat, looking at the stretch of dark road ahead and not knowing what to answer Bobby. The headache that had started to build ever since he’d awoken was getting worse and this conversation wasn’t doing it any favors.

  
“You see, the thing about Elkins was that he never forgot a face… even one of over thirty years ago.”

  
Dean closed his eyes, trying to block the whole world out of existence. He knew the risks of interacting with people that he or his father might know, but at the time he was more concerned about finding a way to kill that yellow eyed bastard and put an end to his family's suffering. “He remembered me?”

  
“He trusted a man he didn’t know with his most prized possession… of course he remembered you,” Bobby said, the word idjit unspoken but quite clear in his voice. “He went back to Lawrence to get the Colt back… met your mother. She had just buried her whole family and was desperate to talk with someone, another hunter, about what had happen-”

  
“Azazel killed them all,” Dean whispered. The sight of his heart-broken mother was too fresh in his memory, holding a newly resurrected John in her lap. “He manipulated her in to making a deal… she didn’t really had a choice.”

  
“She told Elkins everything, begged him to not tell your father,” Bobby told with a sight. “Wanted to protect him, I guess.”

  
“Wasn’t enough.”

  
“Daniel kept an eye on the families that the yellow eyed demon visited that time. You told him you needed the Colt to save your family, so Elkins figured you were related to one of those families. He was there, ten years later, when the demon came back to collect his debt from them.”

  
“And dad?”

  
“I was the one that put John in contact with Daniel. Your father was looking for someone that might’ve known of weapons to kill demons and Elkins was the only hunter I could think of to have researched the matter… Daniel had mostly forgotten about the whole thing until he recognized you one day, when John showed him a picture of his boys.”

  
“And Elkins joined the dots and figured that Sam was one of the demon debts, that we were Mary’s kids,” Dean said, figuring that, with that many clues, it wasn’t such a hard thing to do. “Missouri told me that dad knew about Sam… and about me. He never told you?”

  
Bobby shook his head. “Your daddy was an untrusting bastard… he never told the whole thing to anyone. He shared bits of it with me, other bits with Jim, some others with Missouri, but he never told anyone the whole truth. Good thing that he never figured that what he didn’t share, other might. Elkins was the damn same thing, damn their military code… you know that his whole life, Elkins swore that he never got the Colt back?”

  
“The letter,” Dean whispered. “Elkins left a letter to my dad when he died. He told him then… what else did he know?”

  
“Daniel came to me looking for some books on half-breed demons and demonic halflings. We ended up figuring that Azazel was looking for a human representative. And we knew that when he found him it would be bad… like opening the gates of Hell bad,” Bobby said, remembering back then how frustrating it had been to know what Jake was but not being able to stop him from doing anything because, at the time, they didn’t knew why the yellow eyed demon wanted him for.

  
“And he told dad that,” Dean said, recalling the long weeks that his father had been away, ‘hunting’ with Elkins. He remembered the haunted look in his father eyes when he'd returned.

  
“There was a good chance that this human that Azazel was looking for was your brother,” Bobby said with a sigh. “For a time there, John was sure that Sam wasn’t even his biological son, that somehow the demon had forced Mary to…”

  
“No,” Dean added quickly. For a split second, when he was talking to his possessed grandfather, that thought had crossed his mind too. “He just bleeds in to the kids mouths… nothing more.”

  
As if that wasn’t enough. But the idea of that evil thing laying one finger on his mother…

  
“I told your daddy that he was insane, “ Bobby agreed. “All he had to do was take a good look at the kid and see that he was his spittin' image… Christ, the kid even has his damn stubborn streak.”

  
“Yeah, two peas in a pod, those two... both of them couldn't wait to leave me behind and get their stupid revenge… it’s always about the damn revenge,” Dean whispered. God, he was going to lose his whole family to Hell and their plans.

  
“Sam is doing this to protect you… to protect us. You said so yourself,” Bobby reminded him. He too wanted to believe that. It was better to go on under the assumption of love than of hate. “We need to come up with some sort of plan before we get to Chicago… can’t just waltz in there and ask for Lilith’s head.”

  
The smirk on Dean’s face was downright feral. “Oh, I have a plan… but first we need to find Sam… can’t have him jump out of nowhere at the wrong time and putting himself and us at risk,” he said, leaning forward and opening the glove compartment. “Do you have your exorcisms book around?” Journal in hand, he thumbed through John Winchester's notes.

  
“Why?”

  
“I need to get that thing memorized once and for all… can’t afford to be caught with my pants down anymore,” Dean said, remembering all the times that the fact that he needed a piece of paper to do his exorcisms had put him at risk. Even recently, with Bobby's possession, had it not been for Bobby's reciting the words with him, chances are, none of them would've survived. It was embarrassing.

  
Dean realized that Bobby was staring at him, so much so that he risked sending them straight in to the nearest oncoming car if he didn’t knocked it off. “The road, Bobby, the road… you put a scratch on my baby and I’-“

  
“You can’t memorize Latin?”

  
“Don’t you start too… I had enough crap from Sam because of that,” Dean said, sounding a bit defensive. It was certainly a sore subject for him. “Tried a bunch of times… it just never sticks.”

  
“Damn!”

  
“Well, be discreet about it, why don’t you,” Dean said angrily. “It’s not like all of us are fluent in a gazillion dead languages… there’s a reason they’re dead, you know?”

  
“What?” Bobby actually sounded confused, like he hadn’t just called Dean dumb. “No, it’s not… hot-damn, we should’ve figured something like this might happen,” he mumbled, more to himself than to the fuming young man at his side.

  
“Figured what?” The thoughts running inside Bobby’s were so many and so fast that Dean couldn't grip any of them and understand what the older hunter was talking about.

  
Bobby took another look at him, then glanced briefly upward, as if searching for answers in the car’s roof. Finally, he took a long breath, his decision made. Screw what the angel thought Dean should or should not know. “Exactly how much do you remember from that first time you and your brother went to my house?”

  
Dean frowned, confused about the conversation back flip. “Hum… I don’t know… it was ages ago,” he finally said, forcing his mind to go back that many years. Bobby had been a constant almost all of his and his brother’s childhood. “I remember that you didn't have a TV, which sucked; remember that your dog at the time was a furry big thing named Nixon and that you were an untrusting son of bitch that forced small kids to drink holy water when you met them… but that kind of made you ok in my book,” Dean said with a grin.

  
“That’s because you’re screwed in the head,” Bobby added with a grin of his own.

  
He could still remember like it was yesterday that afternoon when John showed up with two little kids in tow, one eight, the other barely five, each scrawnier than the other. His initial thought that their father wasn’t feeding them properly vanished the first time that he sat with them for a meal. Damn, but those boys could eat… they just had them sort of metabolisms that just burned through everything.

  
Bobby figured that, with the crap they ate to the day, that was about the only thing that was still keeping them this side of three hundred pounds.

  
“Why the memory lane trip?” Dean asked.

  
“Dean… there’ something I gotta tell you-”

  
“And from your tone, I can just tell that I’ll love hearing it,” Dean grumbled, the involuntary pout on his lips making him look like a five year old.

“You were warned about not doing that, Bobby,” Castiel’s voice sounded from the back seat, sending both men in the front jumping in the air. The jerk motion of Bobby’s arms translated in to a dangerous swirl of the car on the road.

  
“Damn it!” Dean barked out angrily. "Stop doing that! You make my car crash and I swear I'll paint your wings pink!”

  
“He needs to know… ” Bobby intoned, determined hands gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. "The kid can’t even hold Latin in his head!”

  
“He doesn’t have to memorize the rituals… he has no need for them,” Castiel said quietly, ignoring the flaming looks that Dean was sending his way and, in turn, Bobby’s.

  
“Oh, _he_ does… _he_ really, really does,” Dean fumed. “And _he_ really would like to know what the fuck you two are talking about!”

  
Bobby looked at the angel through the rearview mirror and put on his best challenging look. “Dean’s right… and don’t you even think about pulling your sleeping-pill fingers on me… I’m driving here.”

  
The mumbled re-warning of _pink wings_ came over the sound of the Impala’s engine sputtering before shutting all together. Bobby barely had time to turn on the blinkers and pull to the side of the road, before the wheels stopped spinning. He fully expected to start dreaming any second then.

  
“What the hell?" Dean shouted. "Would you stop messing with my car?” Turning, he found the back seat already empty. “Hate it when he does that…”

  
Bobby let out a relieved sigh, scrubbing his beard and leaning against the leather seat. So much for the easy part. And now for the hard one...

  
“Now," Dean refocused on the older hunter, "would you tell me what the hell was this was all about?”

  
Fishing out the silver flask that he kept in his jacket pocket, Bobby mumbled, “Best if I just show you.”

  
“Bobby…” Dean warned, remembering the last time Bobby, him and holy water had been involved.

  
“Shut up and take off your amulet,” Bobby ordered.

  
Dean looked confused but did it anyway… what the hell did this particular piece of jewelry have to do with anything? “OK, now what?”

  
“Drink this,” Bobby offered him the flask.

  
“Holy water, Bobby? Really?”

  
“Just drink it,” the older man said, grabbing his cell phone and hitting quick dial. The music from Dean’s cell phone ring tone filled the silent car. “Don’t pick that up.”

  
Dean gave him a look that clearly said what he thought of the other man’s mental stability. Bobby’s only answer was to hold his cell phone opened in the seat between them and patiently wait.

  
Two minutes later, Dean lost what little patience he had left. “What the hell are you doing Bobby? Is this supposed to prove anything? I already told you that I'm not a freaking demon!" Dean forced out through clenched teeth.

  
Bobby ignored him, closing his phone instead. “Ok, that should be enough,” he handed over Dean’s amulet. “You can put it back on again."

  
“Well, that was fine waste of time,” Dean mumbled as he tied the leather string behind his neck.

  
“Listen to your voice mail and then tell me what a waste a time this really was,” Bobby said with a smug smile on his face.

  
When Dean grabbed his cell phone punched in his voice mail code, he was almost afraid of what he would find.

  
Bobby watched closely as the changes marched across Dean’s face. The incredulity, the confusion, the fear, the anger…

  
“What the hell, Bobby?! Is this some kind of joke?”

  
It was in Latin… every single word that he had said to Bobby just seconds before… they were all in Latin.


	11. Chapter 11

"&gt;“So what now? I turn in to Julius _fucking_ Cesar whenever I take a dip in holy water, is that it?”

“I don’t think Julius swore quite that much,” Bobby mumbled without bark because, truly, what was he expecting? This wasn’t a soft pill to swallow. “First time it happened, when your dad brought you and your brother to my house, scared the b'jesus out of us.”

Bobby could recall the scene like it had happened the week before. The innocent offer of a cold lemonade to two thirsty boys, the warning look from John that said he knew exactly what Bobby was up to, Bobby’s quiet stare of ‘what’s the harm? It’s just water’. Then, the scare that drained the color from both men’s faces when Dean opened his mouth to let them know Sammy needed to go to the bathroom, and not a word of it came out in English.

At first, Bobby had thought that it was some kind of unfunny joke that the kid was playing on him. The kid was only eight, but being the son of a hunter... Bobby wouldn’t put pass John to have taught the language almost as well as English to his sons. But the look of surprised fear in John’s face soon dissuaded him from that line of thought.

The kid’s father was scared out of his mind because, one, he had yet to teach the boys even the basics of Latin and two, the conversation that Dean was trying to have with them – apparently oblivious to the fact that he was speaking in a different language - was in such an elaborate form of Latin that John couldn’t understand half of it and Bobby was struggling to get most of it himself.

And it wasn’t only that. Even if Dean had somehow picked up the language somewhere, it still didn’t explained the other things that both hunters had noticed back then, things that Bobby wasn’t gonna share with Dean now because how the hell was he going to explain the warm feeling and the glow and the illogical sense of happiness that he and John felt each time they touched Dean when he drank holy water?

How the hell was he gonna say, without making a complete fool of himself, that in Dean’s presence that one time, was the first time in a very long time, that Bobby felt unburdened? The first time that he could breathe freely ever since his wife had passed away?

John hadn’t said anything then, round eyes following every move his oldest son made, scared shitless of what this could mean for Dean. Bobby knew John had felt it too, that quiet and calmness that neither of them had felt before and would never feel again. But right then, in that moment, there was only one conclusion that they could make.

“We thought you were possessed,” Bobby explained with a pained expression in his eyes. “Tried to exorcise you for three days straight.”

“And I wasn’t?” Dean asked fearfully. He had no recollection of any of the events Bobby described, but he was well aware that speaking in an unknown language was one of the classical signs of possession. His question, however, was more born out of fear for what this meant to his current situation than for a past that was both distant and unfamiliar. “What does this all mean?”

“Hell if I know,” Bobby said with a shrug of shoulders that was anything but casual. “You weren’t possessed then, same as you’re not now," Bobby said, knowing the other man well enough to guess his hidden questions. "We tried everything, but there was no signs of any presence inside of you… you were you… just talking in tongues, that’s all.”

“This doesn’t make any sense Bobby…I’ve been around holy water almost my entire life,” Dean said, looking at the golden amulet hanging from his neck. “Are you saying that this little piece was the only thing standing between me and freak-speak?”

In Dean’s mind, the strange piece of jewelery would always be associated with Sam’s love for him, with Sam’ silent confession that his older brother was there to protect him when their father could not… or would not. Somehow, the knowledge that the amulet was more than just an innocent gift from his younger brother tainted those memories and made him wish that Bobby hadn’t opened his mouth.

Both men were silent for a moment, broken only when Dean spoke.

“After my come back, when I showed up at your door… I wasn’t wearing this thing yet." The events of a few days ago were still too sharp in his mind.

The instant transition from non-existence to blind panic at finding himself inside a closed box; the fear and confusion at finding the devastation left behind at his grave site; the fact that he was actually _walking away_ from his grave site… God! It felt like a lifetime had passed. “You threw holy water straight at my face and nothing happened… did it?”

Because, to be fair, at this point Dean wasn’t even sure which language he was talking now.

“Doesn’t work that way anymore," Bobby explained. "It actually got better as you grew older… guess you built some sort of resistance to it, somehow. By the time you hit your teens, it would only work if you actually drank the holy water and only for a couple of hours... back at my place, you spit it out, remember?”

When Dean nodded, Bobby went on, "It was miss and try for us too, back then.”

Three fingers disappeared inside his scratchy beard as the older hunter dwelled in the past. “It eventually wore off after a week, that first time. We tried different versions of it too… see if it was only when you drank the holy water that it happened. Found out that, in those first few years, any sort of contact would do the trick. Splatter, swallow, touch any sort or form of holy water and you were off to speak Latin for days in a row... your father and I learn quite a few new words in those days.”

The other effects had slowly disappeared too, until only Dean’s speech was affected. The calm and safety that had been literally at hands reach when Dean was younger was gone and even if he never would admit it, it was a feeling that Bobby missed.

He missed it so bad that sometimes he figured that he had imagined the whole thing. Fruits of an over-imaginative mind. Like just now, when for the first time in years he had offered holy water to Dean, without him wearing his amulet.

Bobby could’ve sworn that he had felt it again, but he was going to chalk it up to too many hours driving and a brain so tired that it was feeding of the past instead of watching out for the present.

“Why don’t I remember any of this?” Dean asked. Try as he might he couldn’t come up with the memories of being repeatedly dunked in holy water. That sort of thing should stick to a guy’s memories, right?

“It wasn’t like you noticed when you stopped talking in English and as for the rest?" A faint smile creased the hunter's scraggly beard, "… your father told you that it was research… that we were searching for new methods of delivering holy water to the bad guys. He figured that if he turned it in to some sort of game, mix it with the rest of your training, it would be easier for you… our mind tends to let go if the things that it sees as harmless.”

“But why? What is wrong with me?”

“Nothin's wrong with you, as far as we could figure,” Bobby reassured the younger hunter. He had had almost twenty years to deal with the fact that for this boy, it was normal to talk in a language that wasn’t his own, a language of which he had little knowledge of, a language that was dead.

Dean had had less than five minutes. “We asked everyone and their mothers, trying to figure if anyone had ever heard of anything like this… no one had a clue, so, as far as we could tell, it was just who you were. Some people are born with six-finger hands, some are born speaking languages that they never learned.”

“And this?” Dean asked, holding the horned figure between two fingers.

“Your dad was worried about other hunters finding out,” Bobby said. “When you started hunting with him, there was always the possibility that you might come in touch with holy water… we couldn’t really explain why this happen to you and your dad figured that the rest of the hunters would be really quick to draw their own conclusions. The wrong conclusions.”

“So he stopped looking for whys and started looking for a cover up,” Dean gathered, his face translating what he really felt about being such a freak that his own father had to hide him from the rest of the hunting community to protect him.

Man! Between him and Sam, their father must've believed that he was cursed or something.

“For five years, we searched for something that could stop this,” Bobby said with a nod, unaware of the thoughts clouding Dean’s mind. “I stumbled across some writings that spoke of an amulet carved from the remains of King Solomon's throne. It was said that it would offer immunity against all things holy.”

“Sounds like something a demon would find really handy,” Dean added without taking the effort to hide the sarcasm from his voice.

The left-handed swat that Bobby gave to the back of Dean’s head wasn’t hard enough to hurt but it was tough enough to get his point across.

“Top of my head, I can name you at least five things that are not demons and speak Latin, you id’jit!” Bobby snarled. Of course the boy would fixate in the worst-case scenario! “Your buddy Castiel being at the top of my list!”

“Not my buddy,” Dean mumbled, feeling like he was ten all over again as he rubbed the back of his head. “So, you found the amulet and gave it to Sam… but he said you told him it was for dad… bit of a high gamble there, hum?”

Had it not been for Sam’s gift and the importance of that gesture to him, that would’ve been one of Dean’s worse Christmases. Dad’s journal had ended up in Sam’s hands, Dean had seen himself forced to tell the family secret to his eight year old brother and the presents that he had stolen for Sam had turned out to be too girly even for him. Dad hadn’t showed up until New Year’s Eve that year, a broken arm in a sling and the left side of his face so bruised that when he stood sideways, not even his sons couldn't recognize him.

“The working behind the amulet was a little bit tricky,” Bobby explained. “It wouldn’t just do for your father to put it around your neck and tell you to never take it off… For one, it had to be given to you by a loved one that was untouched by evil and then, the decision to never take it had to come from the wearer, not the giver.”

“Dad wasn’t touched by evil,” Dean automatically replied. His father had done a lot of mistakes, but evilness was not something that he would ever contemplate to even be in the same sentence as his father.

“No, of course not! John was a good man… but a good man that had lost too much, that had seen too much evil,” Bobby explained.

After five years of seeing those boys slowly growing in to the men that they were today, Bobby loved them both enough to fit the bill as well, but like John, he too was tainted by too much evil to have actually make it work. “Neither could Jim, or Missouri or any of the others that your father trusted around you then. Out of all of us, Sam was the innocent one, the only one that could pull it off.”

Dean scratched his short hair, feeling his brain actually hurt from all that he was hearing. Little bright dots were connecting furiously inside his head and Dean was getting a pretty clear picture of what had happen then.

“Dad did it on purpose, didn’t he?” He asked, not really waiting or expecting an answer. “That son of a bitch actually did it on purpose… the whole thing with going on a hunt two days before Christmas, ‘forgetting’ his journal where Sam could find it… For years, I blamed myself for not being able to keep Sam a kid any longer than his eighth birthday and the prick actually did it on purpose!”

Sam was a curious kid. Had been even before he was out of his baby teeth. Why can’t chicken fly if they’re birds? Is the rainbow always the same colors? Where is mom? Where does dad go when he leaves us? Why do we move this much? Why can’t I stay up when you’re waiting for dad to come home? Who hurt dad?

As soon as he caught a whiff of dad’s journal and realized it was filled with secrets, Sam’ sole purpose in life had become to find out what was written inside the mysterious book. All that John had to do was leave it badly hidden and it was a no-brainer that Sam would find the journal and read it from start to end.

Bobby had the grace of not even try to deny it.

“There was no other way, boy! And with your dad hunting more and more and you pestering him to go on more and more hunts, how long do you think Sam would’ve stayed innocent to all the evil in the world?”

Dean didn’t answer, his mind turning to thoughts of Azazel, standing over Sam’s crib, dripping tainted blood inside his innocent brother. Sam might’ve been innocent, but he wasn’t untouched by evil.

“You’re father didn’t know about the demon blood then… that only came out later.”

Dean gave him a look. “You a psychic now too?”

“Nah… you’re just too damn easy to read sometimes,” the older hunter said, knowing exactly what was going on inside that kid’s head.

Dean cleared his throat, busied his hands with the leather-covered book in his hands. “So, even with the demon blood in him, Sam was innocent enough to make the amulet work?” He asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

Dean knew that he was grasping at straws, but right now, straws were all he had going for him. Amulets and curses were funny like that. They didn't care about old history or fate. They take you as you are and account for nothing but your present actions. And the amulet hanging from his neck had pretty much guaranteed that, demon-blood or no demon-blood, his brother was not evil.

Which meant that somewhere along the line of whichever seal that involved Sam, someone had jumped a couple of sentences or had seriously misinterpreted their meaning.

Dean hoped it was that last one.

If Bobby heard all the other questions behind that one, he certainly had a poker face better than Dean’s. “Looks that way… I mean, after you start wearing it, you father and I tested it a bunch of times and nothing happen.”

“Always thought your soda tasted funny too many times for it to be a coincidence,” Dean said, a satisfied smile on his face that had nothing to do with watered down beverages. The amulet had worked then and it was working still. He had no idea if the initial premises had to be maintained or if it was just an activation thing, and he wasn't about to ask Bobby that, but still... it still worked because Sam was still good, and that was what he was sticking with.

“The dangers of accepting open bottles from strangers and hunters,” Bobby said, chuckling quietly, oblivious to Dean's trail of thought.

Both men sat quietly, gazing at the cityscape that was starting to fill their horizon. Ahead of them, the number of cars getting to and from the city was growing in numbers, ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, worrying about bills, bossy bosses, annoying neighbors, the clothes they had to pick up from the dry cleaner and the chicken that they had to unfreeze for dinner… and through all that, while their cars drove by and their minds were busy with a million little things, the end of the world was at hand and they didn’t even noticed.

In an odd way, it was sort of comforting, reassuring even, because as long as things didn't move to the point of mass panic on the streets, then there still was hope for them to put a stop on the whole situation.

“There’ still hope for him, Bobby… I know there is,” Dean’s voice broke through the silence in the gentlest of ways.

Bobby nodded. It was a crazy world they lived in, crazier than most people could ever realize in their life span. If he could accept that he was driving around with a man that had spent his summer vacations in Hell, he could believe that two hunters could stop Lucifer from rising and taking over the world. It was either that or start bawling his eyes out, crouch down and rock back and forth in the best hidden corner that he could find. And Bobby's knees didn't like it when he crouched.

“So… all of this stuff,” Bobby started, probing the ground. “How freaked out are you?”

“About what in particular?" Dean asked, his voice showing well how insane he though this whole thing was. "The all-day, all-news broadcast of other people’s thoughts and feelings or the whole thing of having no control over which language I’m talking?”

The other man shrugged, avoiding the abyss of sarcasm in Dean's voice. “Both, I guess.”

Dean shook his head, trying to find the humor in this whole situation and failing miserably. The one time that he needed his head clear to help his brother, he was too fucked up with his own stuff to be of any use. “Tell you what… I start turning water in to beer, then I let myself freak out,” he said with a fake smile. "Or maybe open up a bar... can you imagine the profit on that sucker? I mean, you can't get any cheaper than tap wa-"

“Dean… I need you with your head straight in this, otherwise…”

“Don’t worry Bobby,” Dean said, throwing the book in to the back seat, his voice dropping the sarcasm and turning dead serious. Bobby was right. Yes, it was a lot to take in and he was no where near ok with what he was becoming, with the changes to his definition of himself, that seemed to morph themselves in to something else every couple of hours. But, if push came to shove, he would gamble with whatever cards he was dealt with. “This whole clusterfuck might actually come in handy.”

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If life gives you crap... well, than just let it dry and start a fucking fire.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o00o0o0o000o0o0o0

“How did I know that I would find you here?”

“Fuck off Ruby,” Sam’ slurring voice replied. He didn’t need to turn around from his seat on the barstool to see the petite demon brunette standing behind him. Her reflection in the wall mirror in front of him was frowning at the glass of scotch in his hands. “I’m taking an afternoon off… I think I deserve one. Last meal of the condemned man and all that crap.”

“You know,” the demon said, ignoring Sam and taking a seat on the stool next to him, “it speaks really highly of your education the way you and your brother turn to the bottle for counsel so often.”

“Don’t you dare speak about my brother, you bitch!” Sam growled.

“My mistake,” Ruby said, her hands raised in mock surrender. “You are nothing like Dean.”

“He’s never going to forgive me,” Sam whispered more to his glass than to the demon seated next to him. Now that he had cooled off, Sam could not shake the image of his brother slumped against the wall, pushed there by his powers. “I shouldn’t’ve left him.”

“He tricked you Sam,” Ruby reminded him. “I warned you to be careful about angels… they can’t be trusted and now this one has managed to turn your brother against you.”

Sam chuckled, a sound that carried none of the joy that it was supposed to. “Better if I trust a demon right? Because you’re so much more trustworthy.” After downing the rest of the amber liquid, Sam slammed his glass on the bar surface, signaling the bartender for a refill.

“Like you said," Ruby cooed, changing tactics, taking on a more sympathetic tone. "I’m here and I understand what has to be done to stop Lilith once and for all. There are choices to be made that you know Dean would stand in the way of.”

“Those are choices that I should stay in the way of too… like any sane people would,” Sam said miserably.

“We’ve been through this before, Sam,” Ruby said, lowering her voice, a mock semblance of sensuality to her tone. “You know that you have the power to defeat Lilith and her minions, but you can’t do it alone. It’s either this or fail miserably and die trying.”

“You know that will be the end result anyway… why not just skip through all the drama in between and just fast-forward to the end?”

“Because this is not a kamikaze mission, you dumbass! You know this can work, you know that you can make this work.”

“Not like this… Dean was right,” Sam said to her face, hating the fact that the mere mention of his brother’s name brought a sting to his eyes. “If this is the way to win this war, then I don’t want to win it!”

“This isn’t about winning; this is about surviving, Sam! This is about being right in the middle of the fucking storm and chose between giving up or fighting… and you can't fight in the pig den without dirtying yourself. I warned you that it wouldn’t be easy and that you wouldn’t like it, but you know I’m right about this!”

Sam sighed. The speech wasn’t new and he had already listened to it one too many times. But she was right about one thing: it was high time to face his pig.

He had spent most of his life running away from who he was, from what he was. He ran away from his family because he didn’t want to become a hunter, fell in love with Jessica and got her killed; he ran away from Dean because he wanted to understand what his visions were about and what he was becoming and Dean almost ended up dead because of him… he ran away from his powers long enough to get himself killed and his brother sent to Hell. He was done running. It brought him nothing but grief.

“Have you found someone yet?”

“I have just the perfect person for it,” Ruby gloated, stealing Sam’s glass and finishing his drink.

“Good... whoever it is, I don’t wanna see her face,” Sam replied, throwing a couple of bills on the counter.

“Don’t worry… you won't have to,” the demon replied with a smirk. “You have the blueprints, right? You know which room to go?”

“Yes,” Sam said, rubbing his tired eyes. He needed to sleep; he needed a bath… he needed this to be over.

“You’re sure you wouldn't rather me do it?” Ruby offered, the sympathy in her voice sounding practiced and out of place, like borrowed clothes that didn’t quite fit.

“Yes,” Sam said with a look in his face that clearly said no, he wasn’t sure. If anything, he was sure that he didn’t want to do this. “I need you on the outside. We can’t let anyone escape this time... we can't let Lilith get away again.”

“Ok… just be sure to do it right.”

“I know how to work a spell, Ruby,” Sam hissed in to the woman’s ear, grabbing her elbow as he dragged her outside with him. “Even the nasty ones.”

“Just checking,” Ruby purred, looking slightly turned on by the rough treatment. “You look a bit tense… and drunk. I can fix one those problems for you,” the demon said suggestively.

Sam ignored her offer. He wasn’t in the mood and tense was the only thing that he could afford to be right now.

“I’m fine… just do your job and let me worry about the rest.”

“Sure thing boss,” she said with mounting sarcasm. “When do you want to do this?”

Sam looked up at the darkening sky. It was barely four in the afternoon and already the sun was gone. A chill traveled up his spine and lodged itself somewhere between his heart and his consciousness.

Lilith was making her move soon. No matter how he felt, or how many doubts he had or how much his heart longed for his brother to be near him in this dark time, Sam could wait no longer.

The world could not afford for him to wait any longer. This was how it was supposed to be. This was what would keep Dean safe.

“Tonight… we move tonight.”

0o0o0o0o00o0o0o00o00o0o00o

Five miles outside Chicago the unusually large number of dead animals started to become too obvious. Bugs, birds, cows and dogs, littering the sideways of the highway. One here, one there, not enough to call attention of the occasional driver who speed through the road with little concern for the landscape, but enough to raise the alarms of the two hunters inside the speeding Impala.

The air felt hacked, heavier, like the prelude to a storm, charged with electricity and the promise of power and destruction.

0o00o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Dean straightened in his seat and rubbed his tired eyes before taking in his surroundings. It was getting somewhat easier, but still a bit confusing to jump places like that.

“Got it?” Bobby asked.

Dean blinked and looked at the older man. “Yeah… sort of. I know where he will be but couldn't get a fix on where they are now. Ruby must be masking his location somehow... the bitch!"

Bobby shook his head in amazement. Dean’s lightning-fast progresses with his re-found abilities had yet to stop surprising him. It was like he hadn’t spent the majority of his life without using his telepathy.

Only the day before the boy knew next to nothing about it and now, barely twenty four hours later, he had already exorcized a demon from inside Bobby’s head and was now attempting to locate his lost brother by touching his massively nerd brain – Dean's words, not his - to get a location on where exactly in Chicago Sam was now, or at least what were his plans, before either of them got to their destination. It was unreal.

“That doesn’t look good,” Dean said, turning sideways in the passenger seat to take a better look at a dead cow on his side of the road. From where he was, he couldn’t see any kind of wound in the animal. It had just simply dropped dead.

“That doesn’t either,” Bobby said, his chin pointing ahead, towards the progressively dark sky. The grey and unnatural purple tones of the clouds ahead would’ve been beautiful if it weren’t for the _wrong,wrong,wrong_ feeling that they aroused in the hunters. “My guess is that either there’re simply too many demons getting together here and we’re seeing all the demonic omens going nuts or-“

“Lilith is getting ready to make her move,” Dean finished. “There’s no time to waste… Do you know where to go to get what we need?”

“I know a guy,” Bobby said, turning on the blinker and getting ready to take the next exit that would lead them straight to downtown Chicago. “You do realize that, as far as crazy plans go, this one barely registers as a plan, right?”

“I know Bobby. Got a better one to share with the rest of the class?”

Bobby huffed. The fact that he couldn’t come up with anything slightly more within the boundaries of sane didn’t make Dean’s plan any less crazy. "Well, I don’t like it one bit.”

“Yeah, I know Bobby… I got it from the first ten times too.”

“There’s too many ‘ifs’ to this thing for it to be safe.”

“I know Bobby.”

"And no matter what you tell yourself, you ain't Batman, boy!"

Dean chuckled at that because, truly, he would gladly give his right nut to borrow Batman's armor for this one. As it was, he would only be borrowing the Bat signal. "I know that, Bobby... still awesome, though," he said with a wink that told the older man that Dean was plenty aware of the level of craziness that they were going for here.

“So, we just gonna operate on blind faith in this one, that it?”

“This time, Bobby, we have no other choice but work it on faith, yes.”

The older hunter took a deep breath. He was getting too old for this crap. He had plans of getting older too, plans that might never see the light of the day if he stood beside Dean Winchester much longer. Heck! Who was he kidding? Best plans of mice and men, my ass! “When do you want to do this?”

“Tonight… we move tonight.”


	12. Chapter 12

“How the heck do we even find the right building in this mess?” Bobby asked, pushing his cap back as he looked up, and up and up at the surrounding city buildings.  


They were trapped in lunchtime traffic, red signals that seemed to last forever in contrast with the flash-like green periods when they could actually move. Not that they did.  


 

If there was one thing that both men inside the Impala had in common was their distaste for city traffic.  


“I figure that might help,” Dean said, pointing at the column of black smoke that he could see rising up ahead. Already two fire trucks had sped by them, rushing to the burning building. The fire site was still a couple of blocks away, but even from where they stood, Bobby and Dean could see that it was smack in the place where Castiel had shown them Lilith to be hidden.  


“Why would Lilith do something like that?” Bobby wondered.  


Dean shrugged. “To show off… because she was cold… or maybe homesick, who knows?” Dean pointed out, counting reasons with each finger that he raised. “Probably just to make it harder for anyone to get in or get out of that place,” he said more seriously. It certainly made his getting inside more difficult. “Does your guy have the stuff that we need?”  


“Yeah,” Bobby nodded, gently pressing the gas pedal to move two feet more. “I’m picking them up as soon as I drop you off. It should take about an hour to get everything ready on the rooftops... How are we working this around the fire department?”  


Dean smiled. His initial plan – apart from the little surprise that he had planned for one specific room - was to project one giant-assed devil’s trap on each of the building’s facade, using industrial spot-lights, access the warehouse main drain, bless the water supply and give one hell of a bath to the bastards inside. Lilith’s little roadside show worked even better.

“We use them… or better yet, we use their water tanks,” he said with a wink to Bobby.  


“Oh, that’s funny, boy,” Bobby frowned, not one bit amused; he knew exactly what Dean had in mind. “Fight Hell’s fire with holy water… why didn’t anyone think of that one before?”  


“We just need to get to their tanks unnoticed…” Dean said, his mind already ticking away in search of ways to distract the busy fire fighters long enough for one of them to slip a cross and a pray down their containers.  


“Don’t worry about that part,” Bobby reassured him. “I have my ways… how are you going to get inside a burning building without the firefighters catching you and straight jacketing your sorry ass?”  


Dean grinned. “How else? The sewers, of course!”

0o00o0o0o0o0o00o0o00o00

"What the hell are you doing?"   
  
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Sam annoyed voice asked back, his eyes never breaking focus from his task. It was like writing backwards in a mirror, painting the sigils on his own chest so that the words came out right to those standing in front of him.   
  
Ruby was right there with him, but she was the last 'person' he would ask for help with something like this. It already felt wrong enough to be standing there, in that hotel room with her, instead of with Dean.   
  
It was too close to all those months that he had spent alone with her, acting as a poor substitute for his dead brother. The feelings were still too raw, Dean’s resurrection still too fresh and every couple of minutes Sam had to remind himself that the reason Dean wasn't there with him was because Sam was trying to protect him and not because he was in still burning in Hell.   
  
"I don't see the necessity of it," Ruby went on, nibbling on the red liquorice wheel, her newest – obsession- craving. "And besides, it's icky to look at!"   
  
"Then don't look... turn and go away," Sam offered as a solution. The plan had been revised a million times; each of them knew which part to play without a glitch. He didn't have to suffer her presence right now.   
  
"Lilith can't touch you anyway... I told you about her plan and I know I told you about the _laws_. Several times. Why this?"   
  
"Yeah, right... her brilliant plan to guilt me in to suicide after she tricks me in to killing Dean and therefore releasing Lucifer," Sam summarized, dropping the sharpie pen on the bed and going to the bathroom mirror and take a look at his handy work.   
  
When Ruby had first told him about Lilith's plans and how this seal worked, Sam had thought she was pulling his leg. It's a stupid plan that depended on too many variables and a couple of impossible things.   
  
First of all, at the time, Dean had been dead and a permanent resident in Hell, so, even if Sam was stupid enough to let himself get tricked in to killing his own brother, she was a couple of months too late. Not to mention that Lilith had been the one that had send him there.   
  
The sight of his brother, standing at his hotel room with Bobby at his side and a smile larger than life had scared the living daylights out of Sam. How screwed up was it that, instead of being overjoyed that his brother was OK and back with the living, Sam was worried sick that Lilith's plan was now a little closer to actually work?   
  
Then there was the fact that the seal specifically stated that a Demon, not a human, would give its life for love... how would that translate in to him killing himself and making it work?   
  
It wasn’t the giving his life up that had him intrigued. Sam would’ve gladly switched places with his brother when the hellhounds came for him.   
  
He still had nightmares about Dean’s death, of how he had screamed and twisted on the bloody floor, hopelessly trying to escape invisible claws.   
  
Sometimes, in those dreams, Lilith actually said yes when Sam made his offer of taking his brother’s place and Sam could feel his own flesh being torn apart by the hellhounds. Sometimes the dream ended there, others it would get worse and he would scream at her to take it away, to spare him the pain. Those were the nightmares that he woke up from crying, not because of the memory of pain but because of the betrayal, because of his weakness.   
  
But as it came to the seal and what it took to break it, Sam wanted – needed - to believe that he was no demon. That, despite Azazel’s tainting, he was still human… that there was hope for him still.   
  
And then Ruby showed him what he could do, how he could access the dark crooks of his soul and Sam had given up hope for himself in exchange for the ability to cause Lilith the same amount of pain that she had caused him.   
  
Sam had no trouble in believing in Lilith’s plan now. He knew what he was becoming and he knew that with Dean back, it would be easy for her to turn brother against brother. He just needed to be faster and smarter than a demon older than time. Piece of cake.

“Dean’s out of the way now… it will take sometime for him and Bobby to get here, so fat chance of Lilith’s plans working now,” Sam said, fervently hoping to have made the right decision when he left his family behind.   
  
“Yeah… then why that?” Ruby said, her finger pointing in the general direction of Sam’s painted chest. Between the red sharpie marks and the black tattoo, the young hunter’s chest was starting to resemble more a colorful canvas than actual normal skin.   
  
“Senoy, Samsenoy and Semangelof,” Sam explained, pointing to a different symbol each time. “The names of the three angels sent by God to capture Lili-“   
  
“Yes, I know who they are, thank you very not! Demons have Sunday school too, you know?”   
  
“She won’t be able to touch me with their names so close. It was the agreement she made then, I figure it’ still valid now.”   
  
“Lilith can’t touch you either way, I’ve already explained you this,” Ruby said, her crossed leg jittery like a petulant child. “It’s the balance between Heaven and Hell. Neither side can interfere or touch the other side’s competitors. Lilith can’t kill you and the angels can’t kill her… can’t kill you either, if that’s what you’ve been worrying about.”   
  
Sam nodded. One of the first things Ruby had told him when they re-met was why Lilith white-light trick hadn’t worked on him. Turns out, Lilith's sending Ruby back to Hell as a punishment had come in handy for Sam, as his personal demon gathered some tasty information before crawling her way back up.   
  
Apparently, way back in the time before Moses and the rest of the prophets were even breathing, Heaven and Hell had made an agreement. When the battle for Humankind was to be fought, neither side would interfere. Lilith hadn’t been privy to that sort of information before, but her little scare with Sam had sent her searching for answers too.   
  
Sam figured that that was when she found out about the seals and how to break Lucifer free.   
  
Lucky him.

“She can’t use her powers on me, I get that… but she can still kill me the old fashioned way,” Sam said with finality, putting his shirt back on.   
  
As for Heaven and the angels… he wasn’t that sure about them. Not about the fact that Castiel wouldn’t kill him or that he wouldn’t end up thanking the angel if he actually did.   
  
“Afraid of a little girl, are we?”   
  
“Fuck off… and if the rules are that strict, what do they call to what you’re doing, to what Castiel is doing too, for that matter. How come that’s not interfering? It’s not like Heaven and Hell are staying clear of the matter.”   
  
“We can coach all we want… we just can’t touch the ball,” Ruby said, turning her wrist to look at her watch. “Speaking of ball…”   
  
“Yeah… let’s get this thing rolling,” Sam said, grabbing Ruby’s knife and turning off the lights. He took a good look around the room, taking notice of the discarded duffel and the opened books lying around. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t be back there to put them away.

  
0o0o0o00o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

  
The smell hit Dean first. Not even the sewers had managed to smell that bad. It was the kind of sour stink that clung to the back of your throat. It was everywhere as soon as he opened the door and tried to see in to the darkness. Rotten flesh, and rusty copper and plain decomposition that hung physically in the air like vaporized shit.   
  
The walls were painted in some dark color that only truly showed its red hues when the flames from the fire raging out side shown upon them.   
  
Dean wasn’t entirely convinced that it was paint at all.   
  
The fire outside the building’s walls seemed to burn without actually consuming anything but the air around itself. It had started to burn hours ago and it still raged on, no amount of water that the firefighters threw on it seemed to diminish it. And yet, the building still stood unscathed. Apparently, Lilith just wanted to keep people out of her business, without burning her cozy little spot to the ground.   
  
There was no more need to keep a low profile, not that demons worried about such things; there was no fear of attracting attention, if Lilith had ever suffered from such human emotions. And if she ever had, her proximity to the completion of her plan, had certainly shunned them away.   
  
If Lilith was to succeed in her plans to break the last seal, a building in flames that doesn’t actually burn was going to be the least of Mankind’s problems.   
  
The warehouse looked like it had been converted to be some kind of office place, the high ceiling divided in half to give room to two claustrophobic floors, partitioned with false plywood walls that circled the entire place in a maze like structure that ended in an open center space.   
  
But it wasn’t the space above that concerned Dean just yet. He had things to do in the basement before.   
  
It had been surprisingly easy to get inside and the lack of demons trying to stop him was beginning to grate on Dean’s nerves. It was as if Lilith wasn’t even trying to stop him… she wasn’t even pretending to try.   
  
There was no way to tell which way was the right way to go, no way to know where Lilith was. What Dean did know was where Sam was going to be and that was where he was heading.   
  
It was just a matter of forcing himself to ignore everything else.   
  
There was no wind inside the structure, but he could still hear the gentle quiver of the chains that Dean knew where hanging from the ceiling of the floor above. He had seen them before. He knew what was making them quiver. The dying, soft moans clashed against his ears, bringing to life louder screams, deeper pain.   
  
In less than a instant, Dean could feel the chains again, wrapped around his limbs, stretching him asunder, he could feel the heat of Hell fire on his skin, he could feel the demons gathering around him, lurking, hissing, sharpening their claws, he could feel them descend upon him; cutting, tearing, shredding, piercing, peeling…   
  
Dean crouched down, head between his knees, breathing in his own scent, trying to not lose himself on the onslaught of superimposing images and smells. Castiel had shown him what this would be like; Dean had seen what Lilith had been doing inside that building and he knew that she had done it on purpose; Dean knew that she was doing her best to bring Hell to this small warehouse. She was counting on him remembering.   
  
He couldn’t let her win, no matter how accurate she had managed this little reenactment.   
  
After one more deep breath that filled his lungs with the smell of his own sweat and the gun oil that had somehow ended up in his clean pair of jeans, and Dean got up. Then, turning his flash light on and masking the bright beam with his other hand, he squared his shoulders. He could do this.

  
In the back of his head, like a background crowd noise, he could hear the thoughts of all the people that Lilith was keeping up there. Most of them were confused, unable to understand what was happening to them. All they knew was pain, and torment and torture beyond their imagination. A thousand voices echoed the same question. Why? Why was this happening to them? Why would no one help them? Why couldn’t they die?   
  
Dean had no illusions about his ability to rescue those people. There was little to no hope that any of the souls trapped in there would ever be able to get out and go on with their lives. Some things you simply couldn’t overcome. So, no, his main goal wasn’t to get them alive. If he managed to just put an end to their suffering and hopefully allow them the chance to move on, he would’ve done enough. It was more than anyone had done for him in Hell.   
  
Most of those people weren’t even sure if they were still alive at all.   
  
Dean knew that because he could feel it too. That limbo-like sensation of breathing but not being alive to feel the air going in. That hopeful feeling that each painful breath will somehow be the last; that ache so deep that you can’t even pinpoint it to one particular location or call it anything but _hurt_.   
  
Dean remembered it all too well. It had been his companion for years in Hell, his compass, his odometer, his measuring scale, telling him where the torment begun and his body ended. Those lines just got duller and duller with time.   
  
The smell was still there too, only stronger now. It was coming from the room ahead; it’s ripped out door hanging like crocked teeth from a hungry opened mouth.   
Dean fought the urge to take a deep breath before peeking inside. He was already nauseous enough without a mouthful of the rotten, coppery smell that filled the air. But he needed to steady his shaking hands, settle the unsettled light dancing all over the floor whenever he uncovered the flashlight.

Dean glued his back to the wall near the door, the solid presence grounding him in the here and now, because in Hell, there were no walls, there was no floor; there was no sky… that brick and plaster surface right there, that was the reality that Dean needed to grip.   
  
In a swift turn, Dean faced the opening and pointed the beam of the flashlight to its maximum potency towards the dark room.   
  
There were five of them in there, two possible women and three that he  
couldn’t really tell.   
  
They were seated against the far wall, like macabre puppets whose parts didn’t really fit together. From what he could tell, only the heads had been left mostly untouched. Limbs and several other parts of the bodies had been severed and switched around, like bloody pieces of Lego put together by a child that had no idea of proper human anatomy.   
  
The idea might not even be that far from the truth.   
  
Dean hadn’t realized just how fast and shallow his breathing was until white spots of light started to dance before his vision. He forced himself to breathe slower, quieter. He needed to make sure that no demon was hiding in the corners there, even as bile gathered in his mouth, begging to be released.   
  
One of the bodies had its eyes opened, gaze fixed on Dean, looking accusingly at him like it knew what he was doing there and blamed him for no arriving sooner.   
_  
Help me._   
  
Dean jumped and lost the grip on his flashlight. He hastily kneeled down to pick it up, careful to avoid touching the blood smeared floor.   
  
Straightening up, Dean turned around, searching for the source of the  
voice he was hearing. There was no one there.   
  
The beam of light returned to the seated corpses, the gory sight of them slightly less frightening than the thought of them alone in the dark.   
_  
Help us._   
  
The one with its eyes opened turned its disfigured face towards him and blinked with its remaining eyelid. It looked like a twisted and sick sort of eye blink, a conspiratorial wink that said _See? We’re just like you._   
  
Dean lost the fight with the bile in his mouth and rushed out of the room, losing the contents of his stomach against the outside wall.   
  
They were still alive! How could they still be alive?   
  
There was nothing to come up, but still his stomach insisted on turning itself inside out despite Dean’s best efforts to control his nausea. With his hands down on his knees and his head bent forward, to avoid messing himself with his own puke, Dean didn’t noticed the wet feeling at the back of his neck at first.   
  
When the gagging subsided and he could finally take a proper breath, Dean started to take notice of the uncomfortable sliding of something warm and slimy going down his back, under his shirt.   
  
Reaching back to touch it, Dean looked disgustingly at his fingers as they came back bloody. His heart hammering against his chest, Dean took a step back and forced himself to look up, to where he knew he would find the source of the blood drops.   
  
Above him, pinned to the wall like a meaty butterfly, was a naked old man. His arms were loose, hands clenched in to fists, white knuckles squeezing the blood from the fingernails digging in to his palms.   
  
His stretched out and opened legs were pined to the wall by what looked like rail spikes, iron monstrosities that had completely shattered his feet as they went in. The rest of the man’s weight was mainly being supported by the bloody stripes of skin and muscle that had been cut from his back and displayed around him like red wings. His weight was slowly pushing him forward and down and Dean could almost hear the sound of the man’ skin tearing loose.   
_  
Please._   
  
A different voice. A male voice. Same despair as the all the others. The man’s opened eyes fixed on Dean, his mouth bloody and unmoving, shards of white teeth like broken glass where the man had bitten hard enough to break them.   
_  
Help me._   
  
“No… don’t!”   
  
Dean wasn’t really sure to whom he was talking, or what exactly he was denying, but there was a ball of fear and a feeling of can’tbreathecan’tbreathecan’tbreathecan’tbreathe that was building up inside his chest and Dean was sure that when those two things managed to burst out, he wouldn’t enjoy the consequences.   
  
He had no time to find out. A pair of skinny jean-clad legs that ended in brown leather boots framed his side view from behind and before Dean could rise or turn to defend himself there was a sharp pain on the right side of his head and a darkness deeper than the rooms around him descended on him. Ruby's laughter joined him all the way down.

  
0o0o0o000o0o0o0o0o0

  
Castiel sat quietly by the riverside, watching the comings and goings of the people of Chicago. The sun was no longer strong enough to warm his skin, but then again, this wasn’t his skin.   
  
He was restless, itching to go to his charge and help him. Protect him.   
  
But he couldn’t. That wasn’t his mission. That was not the reason why he was here.   
  
Heaven and Hell were now as far apart as an atom of oxygen, one small speck of existence standing in between creation and damnation, and he… he sat by the riverside watching the water flow.   
  
Because the second Dean Winchester decided to come to Chicago, Castiel’s mission was as good as over. He could no longer interfere without incurring the wrath of his Father.   
  
The fact that he had grown attached to his charge was no one’s fault but his own. Angels and Humankind had stood apart for far too many centuries and the angels had forgotten how mesmerizing and endearing their human brothers could be.   
  
God’s most beautiful creation was a temptation in its own right. How could he honor his Father, how could he praise His work without falling in awe of Men?   
  
And yet, here Castiel sat, waiting for God’s favorite creatures to come to their doom or rise above it. On their own. Because that was the way it was supposed to be.   
  
The fate of Mankind rested on the shoulders of two of humans in particular. Samuel and Dean Winchester. Two parts of the same candle that could either bring warmth and light or coldness and darkness.   
  
Sam, who had been 'tainted' by Hell and upon whose ability to forgive, rested the survival of Humanity. How ironic was that? Humanity’s fate was hanging on the balance of Sam’s humanity.   
  
And Dean, who had been ‘tainted’ by Heaven, upon whose actions him and his brother depended. There was no irony there, only grief and sorrow.   
  
Castiel touched two fingers to his right cheek, feeling the wetness there. He looked up, wondering if it had started to rain while he was lost in thought, but the sky was dark and dry.   
  
His vessel’s eyes felt hot and stung from within. The angel let the tears fall down, wondering if they were for himself or his charge.

  
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o00o0o

_ **  
Do you think he knows? Do you think he remembers?** _   
  
Dean hears the voices at a distance, whispers that are only understandable because they clash so strongly with the surrounding screams.   
_  
Who cares if he does?! Lilith gave him to me to play with and I haven’t finished yet._ _ **** _

He looks so pretty hanging there… let me play as well.  
  
Dean flinches from the words, but the claws owner doesn't acknowledge him. He is nothing but meat on a hook to them. He has no eyes, but he still sees; he has no mouth but he still screams; he has no ears but he still understands.  
_  
You’ll have your turn… you will all have your turn._  
_**  
Don’t believe you… Lilith wants him upstairs, you know what she needs him upstairs for...**_  
_  
For the plan that she stole from Azazel, you mean…_  
_**  
Azazel never planned to set Lucifer free. He was a fool who wanted all the power to himself, no idea of the old laws… even Lucifer must obey them.**_  
_  
But Lilith knows, right? She’ll do it right… I know she will, and then we can all leave this place._  
_**  
She trusts Lucifer, fears him, loves him… she was there in the beginning with him; she knows how to plan carefully, chose her moves right… then this one and the vessel can finally play their parts.**_  
_  
What if she is wrong? What if doesn’t work?_  
_**  
It will… Lilith will make sure that it all happens as she wishes and when it does, our lord will rise again and we shall all be free! **_

_ **Either way… oh! Look, he’s whole again! Let me try something  
new…** _   
_  
What do you have in mind?_   
_ **  
You’ll see... you’ll see. She wants a taste of him too…** _   
  
Dean looked down at himself, barely recognizing the mended flesh as his own. He was so used to seeing the inside of his bones and the white of his skin covered in red…   
  
He never saw it coming, moving slowly and silently behind him. The snake was bigger than any he had ever seen before; its glistering scales reflected the fire and darkness like polished rubies, sharp fangs adorning a mouth so big that it seemed like no trouble at all to just swallow him whole.   
_  
The angel is coming soon_, it hissed against his ear. _It’s coming for you._   
  
The muscled body slithered across his skin, raising goosebumps that seemed out of place in such a hot place.

_He will take you away from me, but our parting shall be brief. Soon, very soon, our blood will merge and your brother will be doomed_, the voice said inside his head.   
  
NO!   
_  
Yes!_   
  
Please don’t let… I’ll do anything… let me stay here… don’t let it take me away…   
_  
I like it when you beg… when my blood covers your brother’s hands and my lord is at my side, I might make you in to one of my own… so sweet. So tasty. So pure._   
  
Dean tried to get away, but his body was not his to command and he had to endure the presence of the snake as it embraced him and pushed its forked tongue inside his mouth.   
_  
The angel is coming… he will pull you out, but your memories… your memories will stay here, with me. They are my claim._   
  
Dean screamed around the slimy and acid tongue inside his mouth. He screamed for the invasion of his body. He screamed for the impotency of stopping Lilith’s plans. He screamed for Heaven to give up and leave him there. He screamed for himself, hoping that if he ever remembered all of this, it wouldn’t be too late.

  
0o00oo0o0o0o0o0o0

  
Dean woke up screaming, the sounds bouncing against the closed walls and coming back distorted to him. For one terrifying second he had no idea where he was. For one terrifying moment he could still feel the snake’s tongue, playing inside his mouth, tearing him from inside out.   
  
And the pain… the pain was still there, but it was in the wrong places.   
  
His head was throbbing and his wrists and shoulders hurt. He tried pulling his hands to his face, figure what was hurting him. The pain stopped him short, poignant, demanding and all consuming. Dean was so sure that his dream, that his memories of Hell had been just that, memories, and yet, as he forced himself to look at the source of pain in his wrists, Dean wasn’t that certain anymore.   
  
The hooks were back, holding him in place, giving him as much choice as an animal’s carcass hanging from the butcher’s shop.   
  
He could feel the hot stab of pain from where the spiked hook pierced his wrist and wormed between the small bones; he could feel the weight of the metal chains, grating against bone as it pulled his arms up; he could feel the warmth of blood, dripping down his arms.   
  
His feet could touch the floor and now that he was awake, Dean straightened up, trying to relieve some of his body weight from his shoulders. He's arms shook painfully as the strain disappeared, leaving behind the alien sense of metal intruding where it didn't belong.

Dean took a deep breath, as deep as his outstretched arms would allow, and looked around. He could recognize the room and, for one brief moment, the hunter felt a tiny taste of contentment. He remembered Ruby's attack from behind -who was probably feeling very happy with herself right now- only the bitch him had brought him exactly to where he wanted to be.  
  
It was a different room, but not that different from the one where he’d seen the Lego corpses. It was hot in there, steam clouding in the air, turned golden from the soft light that was coming from near the sidewalls and from the door in front of him, a flickering light, like lit candles. It made the room look ancient and solemn, despite the mould and cracks on the wall.  
  
The only sound around him was a sort of wet slushslushslush noise, alternating with the pounding of sneakered feet on the floor that Dean had first thought to be the sound of his own blood rushing past his ears.  
  
The sound was wrong, displaced, like hearing a chicken bark. It was a sound that Dean had learned to associate with children’s playgrounds, with joy and happiness. It was the last sound that he would’ve expected to hear in this place.  
  
Twisting around, as far as his arms could bear and his neck could turn, Dean searched out the source of the sound. He found it in the corner behind him.  
  
There were three little girls there, dressed in school uniforms, playing jump the rope and singing some childish singsong in hushed tones.  
  
It was an odd sight that couldn’t be more out of place in there. And yet, when Dean’s eyes adjusted enough for him to see and he realized what they were using as rope, the game finally made sense.  
  
The school uniform of the little girl nearest the corner was dripping wet, covered in dark blood. There was an ugly jagged slash in her lower belly from which a thin length of dirty white tissue emerged. The farthest girl was holding the other end and between them the stretch of bowel was twirling around and around, leaving trails of blood where it touched the floor. None of the children seemed aware of what they were doing.  
  
Dean closed his eyes, willing his stomach to stay put.  
  
“Oh, good! You’re awake!” The child jumping the ‘rope’ cheerfully said. With one raise of her hand, the other two girls stopped all motion and flopped against the wall, nothing more than dead dolls once again.  
  
“Lilith,” Dean growled. Gone was the little blond girl that she had used last time. This time it was a red-haired, freckled face chubby little girl. The soft curls of hair framing her face looked like a halo of blood around her head.  
  
“Just wanted to say hi before I go… Sam will be here soon and I don’t want to miss my cue for the grand finale,” the small child said earnestly. The glee in her voice was barely restrained. “You remember, don’t you? You remember the part that you have to play… I’m so glad that you decided to join us and do this right!”  
  
Dean hissed, preventing himself from swearing like he wanted to. It was dumb, actually. This poor little kid had probably already witness enough death and gruesomeness to last her a life time of therapy… doubtfully a couple of murmured fucks and mother-fuckers were going to scar her any worse now.  
  
Still, it was hard to look at the cherubic face of the eight year old in front of him and associate it with the slippery snake from his nightmare, from his memories. But yes, he remembered now. He remembered that it had always been Lilith’s plan to get Sam to take his revenge on her. It had always been her plan to give up her existence so that Lucifer might be free. Killing Dean was just the cherry on top of the cake that would throw Sam off his track.

The demon that the seal spoke of had always been Lilith. Castiel had been wrong. He had been wrong.   
  
But now… She was right there, alone. This could all end now. If Dean could act fast enough to reach her host, he could still do something about it. No Lilith, no demon to give its life for love, no end of the world.   
  
He closed his eyes, picturing the little girl in front of him without the taint of evil, without the lunatic smile on her lips…   
  
Dean hadn’t even realized that, somewhere along the line, someone had taken off his shirt, until he felt the cold touch of metal against his skin. He opened his eyes, startled by the intrusive contact, his opportunity wasted.

“T’hell are you doing?”   
  
“Oh, don’t worry,” Lilith said, balancing on the tip of her toes, her words doing little to reassure him as she reached up and the blade in her small hands started to cut the patch of skin in Dean’s chest where his tattoo rested. “This wont hurt a bit.”   
  
Demons lie.   
  
When she grew tired of cutting around the inked patch of skin, she grabbed one severed edge and cruelly yanked the whole thing out. Throwing his head back, Dean bit his lower lip to prevent himself from screaming. The muffled sound that he forced himself to swallow scratched his throat and left a faint taste of blood in Dean’s mouth.   
  
The first breathe that he managed to take, Dean used it to hiss, "You bitch!" between clenched teeth. “Why the hell did you do that for?”   
  
Lilith giggled, the bloody piece of skin extended in her palm like an old papyrus. “Because Sam would recognize it, silly goose!”   
  
The sound of two more pair of feet distracted Dean from looking at his bleeding chest. Two men had arrived to flank Lilith, black eyes glinting against the candlelight. Dean’s eyes immediately zeroed in on the items each man was carrying.

Dean swallowed, tasting his own fear. “What’s that for?”   
  
The demons moved closer, an evil sneer on their borrowed faces.   
  
“No, wai-“   
  
The long piece of cloth that one of them was carrying was shoved inside Dean’s mouth, preventing any further sound from escaping him.   
  
“Say bye-bye Dean,” Lilith said, her eyes rolling back and leaving nothing but white. “Can’t have you mouthing off now.”   
  
When the other demon shoved a bag down Dean’s head, Lilith’ smiling face was the last thing he saw before complete darkness engulfed him. Left only with his sense of smell, he immediately noticed the slightly acid scent inside the bag, the way that it made his throat water and burn at the same time.   
  
Ether.   
  
Dean let panic overwhelm him, forgetting about the chains, forgetting about the hooks. The rag inside his mouth muted the howl of pain that the movement cause. The pain only made him breath deeper and faster, avidly sucking in the very fumes he was trying to avoid.   
  
He could not allow himself to fall asleep. His whole plan rested on his ability to be conscious and to do his part. By now, Bobby probably already had all the lights in place, devil's traps drawn over each of them, light beams projecting the pattern on the buildings outer surface. Those demons weren't going anywhere, of that Dean was sure.   
  
But the rest... for the rest he needed to be wide awake and functional, if not free. He needed Lilith distracted and, more importantly, he needed to warn Bobby when to activate their escape plan.   
  
Dean bucked against his restraints, desperate to fight against Lilith and her demons. But he was helpless to do anything but what the ether’s fumes demanded of him.   
_  
Nighty night, Dean. Sleepy boys can’t talk with their brains…_  
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

  
Sam almost felt bad for Ruby, fighting off the legion of demons that Lilith had surrounded herself with, using little more than her bare hands. He had offered to return her knife to her so that at least she could defend herself, but the demon had patronizingly laughed in his face and told him not to worry, she had her ways.   


The room she had told him about was beneath the main part of the warehouse, a sort of abandoned boiler-room that still maintained its working furnace, even though the previous owners had installed air-conditioner in the rooms above. From the blue prints it looked like no one even knew that the room was there, hidden as it was behind some storage bookshelves. They were counting on that to give Sam a relatively demon-free space to work.   
  
Alert to his surroundings, Sam opened the door, figuring that if Ruby planned to double-cross him, this would be as good a place as any. He breathed a sigh of relief when the room revealed nothing more than moist steam, feeble candle light and a man, hanging limp from two lengths of metal chain.   
  
Sam was glad that Ruby had kept her promised and delivered her - their - victim with its face covered. There was already too much guilt on the younger Winchester's consciousness. He didn’t need a face to associate with what he was about to do. Sam winced as he couldn't help but notice the apparent brutalized state that their would-be sacrifice was in. Apparently, Ruby had taken the time to amused herself.   
  
Sam stared at the needlessly mutilated flesh. What was the point of making this person's last moments on Earth even more painful by mangling his wrists and chest?   
  
If he knew anything about Ruby, Sam figured that this was probably her payback at the way he had been treating her ever since they had left Dean and Bobby.   
  
He had asked for a faceless sacrifice victim so that he could forget. She had given him a sight that was sure to be branded in to his memory.   
  
This was far from being his first choice of plan. Sam had quickly understood that he could not defeat Lilith and at the same time take care of all the demons he knew she would surround herself with. Ruby could only fight them for so long before she too was overpowered and Sam needed his concentration focused on the main bitch. No, he needed extra help on this.   
  
So, his first plan had been to call the Achieri demons and order them to kill the other demons. It was risky, but he figured that once given the order, he wouldn’t have to pay close attention to his borrowed allies and kill Lilith.   
  
Ruby had been extremely graphic in her explanation of whom the Achieri demons served above all and what they would do to him and the possessed people if Sam forced them to go against their mistress.   
  
The possibility of using the Daevas demons had briefly crossed Sam’s mind, but he refused to go there. He had seen first hand how unstable and difficult to control those beasts were… and Meg had been a full-blown demon. Sam could not afford one more enemy falling on his head.   
  
Using the buildings water supply to drench the demons in holy water had been next on the table, but it was a plan that had only finite possibilities. Holy water could keep the demons at bay and contained for a time, but it would also prevent Ruby from helping him and would do nothing for the possessed people but boil their skin.   
  
Sam was on the verge of trying his hand at a mass exorcism using his mind, something that he knew he wasn’t strong enough to pull off, when Ruby reminded him of a spell she had wanted to use before but had been prevented from doing so by Dean.   
  
All they needed to do is find a virgin willing to part with its heart.   
  
Like the poor bastard hanging before Sam now.   
  
For whatever reason, Sam was expecting a girl, like last time. Or maybe a kid. He didn’t know if he would be able to go forward with the spell if it had been a child. No, Sam was glad that it was a guy. Just some random, no-luck-at-all, unfucked guy.   
  
Ruby’s knife was heavy in Sam’s hand as he neared the still man. From what Sam could see, the guy was young and fit. A whole life ahead of him.   
  
The patch of bloody flesh in the guy’s chest was so fresh that it was still slowly oozing blood, as the outstretched arms made his own weight squeeze the chest muscles. The guy’s head hung down, hidden behind a black bag, and judging by the way none of the weight is being held by his legs, Sam figures that the man’s probably unconscious. All the better.   
  
He just hoped that the guy remained like that until this was all over.   
  
Sam wiped the sweat from his forehead and started to recite the ritual’s words, black words that sounded wrong and filthy in his mouth even though he knew that he was saying them right.   
  
The sound of Sam’s voice echoed in the otherwise empty room and the guy in front of him stirs, sluggishly struggling to raise his head like the weight on his neck was more than he could possibly handle.

“Please don’t wake up, please don’t wake up,” Sam found himself whispering, knife ready to cut the man’s chest open and take out his heart. He had spent half the afternoon sharpening it; cleaning the remains of Dean’s blood from it; trying to figure the easiest place to cut, finally deciding on that spot beneath the last rib, the one their father had taught them about. No bone, just muscle and a clear path to the pumping organ.   
  
Just one final sentence of the spell; just a couple more words; so close…   
_  
Sam._   
  
The young hunter almost jumped in the air when Dean’s voice sounded inside his head.

“Dean?”   
  
“Drop the knife Sam.”   
  
Sam turned around so fast that his neck snapped painfully. He didn’t recognized the voice, but the fact that the corridor behind him was now filled with demons and that leading them was a little girl who was dragging Ruby by her hair, Sam doesn’t have to struggle much to guess who she is. “Lilith.”   
  
“Sammy… it’s been a long, long time,” the child says, smiling like she was actually pleased to see him. "I’ve missed you and your soft lips,” Lilith said suggestively.   
  
Sam shuddered at the sight of a small girl trying to seduce him and forced a practiced smirk on his lips. He poised the tip of the blade on the bounded man’s chest, trying to ignore the quivering flesh beneath his fingers. “You’re too late… one push of this blade and you and your pals are history!”   
_  
Sam._   
  
Sam jumped as Dean’s voice invaded his head again. Was his brother really this close or was he trying to talk to him from a distance, like Andy had done? Could he even do that?   
  
“Suit yourself… either way, it’s not gonna work, you know?” Lilith said in a calm and slightly bored voice, like she really had nothing to fear.   
  
That was enough to give Sam pause. He knew that it wasn’t above the demon to try and play mind games with him, but she was also a coward that would not risk her own skin so blatantly like that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”   
  
Lilith was entertaining herself with one of the child’s red curls, twirling it around her fingers. “Well, Ruby’ spell calls for a person of virtue, right? I should know, I was the one who taught it to her… that guy she brought you; he’ seen more pussy than Tweety bird,” she said with a giggle. “But you go ahead and try it anyway. Is he awake? He is, isn’t he? You could ask him yourself…”   
  
A nagging suspicion that, if Sam was to be honest with himself, had been there since he had entered this room, became a full trot certainty, hammering inside his chest. Sam looked at Ruby, searching her face for the truth, but the kneeling demon wasn’t even looking at him. She looked pissed and scared, a rare combination that wasn’t easy to pull off.   
  
Sam looked at the trapped man again, finally taking in the details that he had refused to acknowledge before: the dust of freckles over the chest; the absent skin right in the place where a tattoo should be; the ring on the right hand… how could he have missed the silver ring? He had seen his brother twirling that freaking thing around his finger for years! Teased him about it every time he caught him in the bathroom, brushing it with toothpaste – usually with Sam’s brush - to get it shiny again whenever the silver got dull. How could he had no seen what was right in his face?

“Dean?”   
  
The sounds coming from inside the bag were muffled, probably gagged. They still sounded like a yes.   
  
Sam wasted no more time and as he began taking the bag off the man’s head, sent silent prayers skyward that it wasn’t Dean’s face that he would find underneath. As always, his prays weren’t heard. “Oh my God! Dean?”   
  
Dean blinked, even the soft light hurting his eyes. When Sam pulled the gag from his mouth, it felt like half the skin of his tongue came with it.   
  
“Sam,” Dean whispered, sounding more like a frog than a person, his mouth so dry that it was as if he had never tasted water in his life.   
  
Before either could say or do anything else, Lilith, bored with the soppy show in front of her, raised her hands, sending Dean’s body five feet off the ground, viciously pulled by the chains hanging from the ceiling.   
  
Dean howled in pain as his pierced wrists took the brunt of his weight, three opposite forces pulling him at the same time down, left and right. The world grayed around the edges until Sam's voice brought him back.   
  
"Dean! Stop it, you bitch! Let him down!"   
  
Lilith was giggling, looking at Sam's extended hand. She knew what he was about to do and again, she wasn't scared. "You're fault he's up there Sam. You're the one who trusted Ruby, you're the one that agree to sacrifice a human being so that you could defeat me... Ruby, she can't even be blame for betraying you... she's my pet, it's not really her choice."   
  
Sam closed his eyes, power surging though him in an invisible but tangible way.   
  
"That's not gonna work either," Lilith' singsong voice broke through his concentration once again. "You see, since we last met I did a bit of asking around about your powers and found some very nice things and some pretty, pretty drawings... of how to render them useless."   
  
Sam couldn't help but look up. Right above the place where Dean had been strategically placed, the ceiling was sporting a circle drawn in black, ancient looking squiggles painted around it. Sam didn’t recognize the design, but it looked like the real deal. He was going to try anyway.

"I ain't falling for that," Sam hissed, praying that he was right about this.   
  
It was like the energy that he was sending towards Lilith had hit a rubber wall, bouncing back to him with twice the force that he’d send it. The impact was unexpected, like a cloud of tiny needles, enough to knock the air out of him and force Sam to his knees.   
  
Recovering from the pain, Sam looked up to see Ruby, standing right in front of him, a smirk in her lips that didn’t go well with the fact that Lilith still had her on her knees, held by her hair like a dog on a leash. "You having fun with this, bitch?"   
  
Ruby had taught him everything that he knew about his powers. She had been by his side every step of the way, guiding him through every failure. And she had been working for Lilith all along, working to get him to this place, to this moment.   
  
"Sam... finish the spell."   
  
Sam almost dropped the knife, the knife that he forgot was still in his hands, the only weapon that he had against a room filled with demons. He looked up, meeting Dean's eyes. For a moment he had been sure that the voice had been inside his head, but the chuckle from Lilith told Sam that she had heard it too.   
  
"Yes, Sam, by all means, do finish the spell. We'll just sit here and wait while you carve your brother's heart out," Lilith's childish voice chipped in.

  
"Sam, trust me... the spell... it will work. You can finish this all now," Dean insisted. He sounded out of breath; each word looking like it was an enormous effort to push past his lips.   
  
Lilith was patiently waiting, goading Sam in to hating her even more, luring Sam in to vengeance. Patiently waiting for Sam to kill her.   
  
No matter what happened to him, Dean could not allow Sam to do that, even if it meant sacrificing himself. It wasn't like he wasn't used to it. This time, at least, it would be for the greater good and not just his selfish reasons.   
  
When Castiel had pulled him out of Hell and back in to his rotting body, everything had clicked back to zero. It took a while for Dean to come to terms with the fact that he had the memories of the certain events in his life, but he no longer had the scars to prove it. And just like his skin had been given a fresh start, Dean knew that everything else had returned to its out-of-factory, pristine condition.   
  
The spell that Ruby kept pushing Sam in to doing had sounded barbaric to Dean's ears when it had been Nancy's heart on the line, but now that he could control all the factors and no one else was to be put at risk, it actually sounded like a good plan.   
  
He knew that Bobby was probably going insane on the outside, waiting for his signal. But if this worked, if he could convince Sam that this was a good plan... then there would be no need to be dependent of the 'what ifs' his plan was riddled with.   
  
"It won't work Dean," Sam managed to say, feeling himself drown in the insanity of it all. He had been doing all of this to keep his brother safe, to keep him out of Lilith's hands and now, not only was Dean at her mercy once again, but his own brother was telling him that it was a good thing to kill him. For a second he wished that Dean was possessed and that this was just one of Lilith's minions playing tricks and fucking with him.   
  
But Sam knew better. That had been Dean's voice that he had heard in his head, and those were Dean's eyes, begging him to do the right thing.   
  
"It... will... smooth as baby, Sam," Dean insisted, his voice growing fainter as he pushed his vocal cords to work when all that his body wanted to do was shut down. "As a baby."   
  
The full scope of what Dean was trying to say hit Sam and Lilith at the same time. Oddly enough, it was horror and fear that registered on both faces. Horror and fear, because Sam was starting to realize that this might be the only way to stop Lilith; horror and fear because, for the first time since she had set her plans in motion, they were now at risk of failure.   
  
Sam tried to imagine a world where Lilith had been defeated, where the seals were no longer in danger and every new day was filled with new possibilities and wasn’t just some countdown to the end of the world.   
  
He tried to imagine a world where everyday for the rest of his life, Sam would wake up and realize that his brother was still dead. A world where, not only was he as alone as he had been for the past four months, but where he had to live with the memory of stabbing his own brother; with the feeling of Dean’s blood covering his hands; a memory that would never go away, a feeling that would forever be fresh and never fade.   
  
But then again, if Lilith was gone and all the demons that followed her were vaporized by the spell, Sam didn’t need to stick around. If the memories of killing his brother proved too much to deal, Sam could easily stop the memories from replaying themselves.   
  
Ruby had warned Sam that killing himself was what Lilith was aiming for, that the minute he killed himself, the last seal would be broken, but… Ruby had done nothing but lie and trick him in to doing exactly what Lilith wanted.   
  
So maybe, just maybe, all that he had to do was make sure that neither Ruby nor Lilith was around to keep breaking the seals and then he too could drop out of existence. It was a dark and oddly comforting expectancy.   
  
Sam tightened his grip on the handle of the knife. He could do this. Dean would help him do this. And the last thing that either of them would see was Lilith going to waste.   
  
Lilith was watching Sam’s face closely. The turmoil of feelings and thoughts inside his head were clear on his face. It wasn’t hard to see the moment when Sam’s decision was made.   
  
She was too close to the end to risk everything on the odd chance that those two pigheads would actually choose to sacrifice themselves to defeat her. She was so close that she could almost feel the touch of her lover back with her. Millenniums apart from Lucifer and now that she had finally discovered the loophole that would bring him back; she wasn’t about to allow two miserable humans to ruin everything. No, she was too close to let that happen.   
  
“You and me Sam… that’s how it will be,” Lilith cryptically said, as her small frame disappeared down the dark corridor. There was still time, there was still a chance. Sam hated her more than anything. And that was her ace up her sleeve, the one thing that couldn’t, wouldn’t fail. All he had to do was follow.

  
Sam had noticed when the change came over the lead demon, but there wasn't really time to do anything about it. Lilith had given the silent order, and Sam could only stand and watch as the demons surrounding them advance as one. Lilith, on her part, had turned away and left, apparently leaving her minions to deal with the mess.   
  
And for a tiny fraction of a moment, for one half-breath of existence, Sam wanted to hug and kiss Lilith, because her escape rendered Ruby’s spell useless. The cowardly way in which the head-demon had high-tailed out of there as soon as she realize that Sam was serious about going ahead with the spell had saved Dean’s life.   
  
Sam needed only to make sure that he stayed that way.   
  
The young hunter looked at his struggling to breathe brother and the number of demons ready to kill them. His decision was easy to make.   
  
The thing about Sam using his demon-given powers was that they were demon-given and, like most things demon related, they were naturally evil and messy.   
  
The very first time that Sam had tried to use nothing but his mind to expel a demon out of some guy’s body, it had not been pretty. It had been long, painful and bloody. Very bloody.   
  
Because, contrary to popular belief –if there is one about the matter- when a demon takes over a person’s body, they don’t simply lodge themselves in the person’s lungs, or stomach, or what ever nice cavity they can find. They weren’t virus; they weren’t bugs. They were more, if anything, like parasites that use you and ride you to death.   
  
However, sadly, an exorcism wasn’t the same thing as pulling one giant tapeworm out of someone’s ass.   
  
No, they worked like this omnipresent being inside the person’s body, like a glass of water being soaked by a dry sponge. They took it all, jammed themselves in to each and every cell of the person’s body, controlling every nutrients’ exchange, every pump of blood, every electric discharge of the brain.   
  
So, when Sam had tried to take one demon out, thinking that it was just like pulling a tapeworm, he had ripped the guy apart. Literally.   
  
For him, it was easier that way. The less care Sam took in differencing demon from human, the less pain he had to deal with in the aftermath.   
  
The first time that he had managed to keep most of the victim intact after expelling the demon, the headache had been so bad that Sam could barely open his eyes for the two following days.

  
Ever since then, he had been trying to find the perfect balance between keeping the victim alive without melting his own brain in the process. He kept a score in his journal, noting down the number of demons he had send to Hell, the number of victims that he had managed to keep alive.   
  
Doing it over and over seemed to help, each time becoming less and less painful, but it was hard and it took time. A long time.   
  
He had started being successful a couple of weeks ago.   
  
Now… now he needed the bloody part to make a statement with the remaining twelve demons in the room. He needed them to understand fast and crystal clear that he meant business and that their best chance was to take a leaf out of Lilith’s book and make a run for it.   
  
The first two that came near him and Dean didn’t even have time to know what hit them. One minute they were sneering at what they assumed to be an easy prey, the next their body parts were so tangled together that their own mothers wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.   
  
Sam took advantage of the few seconds of confusion and fear that engulfed the remaining demons and send a jolt of energy to the insertion points of the chains keeping Dean’s body imprisoned.   
  
It was not a trick that he used often and therefore not one that he could quite control, like his telekinesis, but both seemed to obey him when he let his emotions run wild. Like anything evil, his powers fed on fear and pain. And he was feeling plenty of both right now.   
  
Dean was barely conscious when his feet hit the ground and Sam eased his descent and pulled him to lean between some stored boxes and the back wall. Now that his stretched arms weren’t preventing him from filling his lungs, Dean’s breathing wasn’t so painful to hear.   
  
Sam cast one quick look at the mess that Lilith had done to his brother’s wrists and decided that removing the hooks now would do more harm than good. Sam still had the rest of the demons to deal with and, without poking around it, the wounds looked ugly but not life threatening. “Stay here,” he whispered to Dean, hoping that, despite his unfocused eyes, his brother would listen to him.   
  
Sam turned, ready to face the rest of the demons, who were slowly circling them. None was too eager to be the first to make a move, not after what they had seen happen to the other two. In fact, Sam suspected that it was only their fear of what Lilith might do to them that was preventing them from making a dash for the exit.   
  
The explosion by the boiler container took them all by surprise. As big bangs! go, it wasn’t that much of a blast, but in the silent room filled with enemies ready to jump on each other’s throats, it felt like an atomic detonation.   
  
It took the demons one second to realize that the container had been filled with water and that they were wet. It took them two seconds to realize that it had been filled with holy water and that the overwhelming smoldering smell was coming from their skin.   
  
Sam doubted that the timely explosion had been a coincidence or some sort of heavenly intervention to help him, but he took his chances where he found them, and a bunch of screaming and steaming demons standing between him and Lilith was too good to pass. He took advantage of the mayhem and charged against the nearest demon, tearing him apart.   
  
It took Sam close to three minutes to realize that the holy water was starting to burn him too.

  
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

  
Some people live their lives accordingly to their stomach needs, arranging their everyday dealings around meal times; some people lived their lives accordingly to their feet needs, arranging their everyday dealings around distances and the type of shoes that they are wearing at any given day.   
  
Today, Dean’s life was lived according to the pain in his wrists. When he had first awakened, the pain was there but it was manageable if he didn’t make any sudden or drastic movements; when Lilith decided to string him up like a puppet, Dean’s whole world had disappeared behind a veil of white, piercing pain.   
  
The veil was slowly receding now that he could feel the floor under his feet once more, the solid presence of a wall behind his back and Sam… Sam all around him.   
  
The events of the last couple of minutes were a little fuzzy to Dean, but he clearly remembered that Bobby was outside, waiting for his signal and that, although he couldn’t really remember what Bobby was supposed to do, Dean knew it was important that Dean told him when to do it.   
  
Now… how was he supposed to deliver the message to the older man if Bobby was standing outside and he was inside?   
  
The wall of feelings and disarrayed thoughts of hundreds of people all clashed in to Dean’s awareness, like the awakening of a sixth sense. He pushed it aside in a way that was quickly becoming second nature to him, pushed it far away enough to at least be able to form a though of his own.   
  
Well, at least now he remembered how he was supposed to warn Bobby… he was Professor-Xavier-ing him.   
  
Sam was standing now, his presence no longer like a shroud around Dean. He was saying something too, but for the life of him, Dean couldn’t translate the sounds coming out of his brother’s mouth in to actual words. He could understand the bottom line, though… Sam was going away. Ready to fight alone.   
  
Dean gave up on the gloomy presences and unfocused room and closed his eyes, forcing his oxygen-deprived mind to reach for the older hunter. _Now, Bobby! Do it now, do it now!_   
  
The memory of the homemade bomb that he had hidden earlier behind the boiler hit Dean seconds before the sound of the blast did.   
  
In the fraction of time between the explosion and the impact of his head against the wall behind him, Dean finally remembered why it was so important to give his signal to Bobby. Because if he didn’t, then the older hunter would never know when the right time to activate the detonator that Dean had left with him; and if the bomb never went off, there wouldn’t be any holy water flooding the small room.   
  
Dean knew that there was something else that he should be doing, something important and that could not wait, but the sound of the screaming demons was like a sweet lullaby to his ringing ears and on that note, Dean allow darkness to claim him once again.

  
0o0o00o0o000o0o0o0o

  
Dean had no idea of how much time it had gone by, but he hoped that it hadn’t been that long. The air around him was saturated with water and blood, the smell of burned skin so intense that it made him wonder if he was the one on fire.   
  
Outside, he could hear the powerful jets of the firefighters, still going at it, still trying to beat an unbeatable blaze.   
  
Inside, everything was quiet.   
  
Dean risked cracking his eyes open. He could feel his pupils contracting and expanding like crazy, struggling to adjust to the dim light.   
  
When he finally managed to focus enough for his brain to form an image, Dean quickly got a really good picture of what had happen in there. It was also easy to understand that the silence was because he was the only still breathing.   
  
It looked like something out of a Romero movie, only the blood was for real and that there was no prosthetics in the world that could look as real, as gory or as raw as those he was seeing. It was as if a chainsaw and a blender had gone on a date and gotten along just fine.   
  
And the thing that mostly turned Dean’s guts was no the result, but the fact that he knew who had done that, the fact that the imprints of fury, anger and hate had been left all over the corpses remains and the room itself. And they all screamed the same name.   
  
Sam.   
  
Sam, who wasn’t anywhere around.   
  
Sam, who was using his powers in the most vicious and gruesome way.   
  
Sam, whose mind was hell-bent on killing Lilith.   
  
Sam, who had been carrying Ruby’s knife, the same knife that the demon at the hotel had used to cut Dean. The knife that had Dean’s blood all over it.   
  
The same knife that would free Lucifer the moment Sam killed Lilith.


	13. Chapter 13

There was no time to panic, even though the only thing that Dean wanted to do right then was to punch some walls and maybe, just maybe, cry like a little girl. He was facing a huge pile of shit and there was no shovel anywhere near. Not even a tiny spoon.

There wasn’t even time to wonder what he could and could not do. Dean knew what he HAD to do.

There were too many body parts scattered through the floor. Men and women that had had the misfortune of crossing paths with a demon. People he did not know but that he was certain didn’t deserve this… this unworthy and inconsequential death. They had been nothing but pawns in Lilith’s plan; they were nothing but an obstacle in Sam’s way.

Not that far from where he was, there was one body that Dean could recognize, a spread of dark hair like a broken brush on the floor.

Ruby too had served her purpose and, despite her machinations, neither Sam nor Lilith had found her worthy of being saved. Despite the fact that the girl she had been possessing had been as innocent as any of the others, Dean could not bring himself to pity her.

Dean searched the rest of the room for his things. He had brought his shotgun and two flasks with holy water. Neither would do much good against the hundreds of demons that Lilith had no doubt posted between her and Dean, but they felt like a good safety blanket.

If it weren’t for the devil’s traps sealing each of the walls of the building, Dean was sure that Lilith would’ve left already. But then again, this was exactly what she wanted… this was exactly where she wanted to be and she was too close to give up without a good fight.

Dean just had to get to Sam before Sam found Lilith.

After he got his stuff.

Dean spotted a small lump of dark clothing on the ground not far from him. He just hoped that it was his jacket and that the lumpy things that he could see underneath were his gun and holy water.

Now he just needed to get there. Three feet away and, judging by the way he was feeling, they might as well be a mile.

Dean looked at the mess on his wrists; bile threatening to rise once more when he was finally able to associate the white hot pain with the mesh of blood, flesh, bone and metal that he saw. He was glad he couldn't remember those going in, because he could only imagine the mess of them coming out.

He was fucked.

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Dean tried to close his hands into a fist. It was harder than he thought. The pain alone was enough to rip a howl from his throat and make the world around him dim in its grim colors. Two fingers in his left hand and three from the right wouldn’t move at all; the rest bent, but there was no real intent or strength behind the gesture. And not one thumb could be found among them.

Which left Dean with a grand total of five more or less working digits to fire a gun and use a flask of holy water.

He was so fucked.

‘One problem at a time,’ Dean mumbled to himself. At a distance, he could hear faint screams and sounds of fight. Somewhere up there, Sam was fighting alone and getting closer and closer to Lilith. From what he could see in that room, Dean had no doubt that Sam would win that fight.

First things first. Getting rid of the two lengths of chain that were currently weighing his wrists down.

There was only one way to go about it and only one way to do it, that part was pretty clear to Dean. Only, he just wasn’t sure if he would be able to stay conscious long enough to finish doing it.

Using the working fingers of his left hand, Dean twisted the right chain in his left arm, holding the metal links as close as he could bear from his right wrist.

He took a couple of deep breaths, not one bit self-conscious about the fact that he sounded like a pregnant woman going through labor. In a strange, perverted and totally wrong way, that was exactly what he was preparing to do, only instead of a baby, he was delivering one ugly-assed piece of crooked metal.

Trying not to think too much about what he was doing, Dean started to gently pull and twist the hook out of his wrist. Quickly he discovered that he only thought it hurt before. Now, feeling every single inch of it grading, scraping and abrading against the mangled flesh and bone, his stomach was threatening to lose its contents in earnest and his vision was blurring with uncontrolled tears.

Shit.

Sweat was running down his face, salty rivulets seeping into his eyes, stinging and burning, while more dripped from his chin and trailed down his neck. Some even found its way into his various wounds. Fuck.

Fighting for concentration and consciousness, Dean blurred the rest of the room out of existence, ignoring the way in which the walls kept wavering in and out of focus, and centered himself on the single act of pushing that piece of metal out. Inch, by inch, by agonizing inch, until the whole hook was out.

Dean drooped the chain to the ground, panting louder than the sound of metal pooling near his boneless arm, tears escaping his tightly close eyes. Exhausted, he allowed himself a moments respite and let his head fall back against the wall, shoulders slumping half way towards the floor. Once strong back muscles were even refusing to support his frame. Just the effort of keeping conscious left his whole body trembling and off balance.

One thing was certain: there was no way that he was getting that second hook out.

Devoid of the metal hook, the right wrist was now bleeding profusely, blood flowing freely to pool on the floor. It was almost hypnotic, the way it streamed down his forearm with more strength and velocity than what Dean thought possible. From the looks of it, the hook had nicked the artery and that was so not good. Just his luck.

Dean looked around. There was nothing near that he could use as a bandage or even a tourniquet. The only pieces of cloth that he had were his blue jacket and the tattered remains of his shirts, but those were in a pile on the other side of the room, all looking an impossible distance away.

Dean’s eyes fell to his shoes and he froze. Of course! "C'mon Winchester," he was muttering to himself as he grabbed the boots' shoelaces. "Fucking think, man."

Of course, he could rightfully blame it on the poor light and the pain, but when had he ever cut himself that kind of slack? Still cursing his mental lapse and momentarily insanity, Dean began the tedious task of unlacing his boots, forcing two uncooperative fingers in to working, slowly and painfully.

That done, like a practiced junky, Dean laced a noose that he then slipped carefully around his right hand. Placing the cord as close to the wound as he dared, he next began pulling the noose tight, letting out a curse through his clenched teeth.

Dean forced himself to pull tighter and tighter, until the gushing of blood slowed down to a mere sluggish trickle. His hand felt numb and his wrist was sickly white, but at least he wouldn’t bleed out anymore.

Once the pain eased to the point where Dean no longer wanted to chew off his own arm, he picked up the second chain. With the hook still in place, the wound only seeped precious life fluid, but with seven feet of chain hanging down from it, that arm was useless either way. So, Dean figured that he might as well do something useful with the chain, like keeping said encumbered arm out of his way.

Painfully, slowly, he began folding the chain in three loops, securing it like a sling around his neck and resting his aching arm against his chest.

The last link, where the chain had broken off its hinges, was melted. Dean didn’t remembered exactly how he had been freed from the ceiling, but he thought he had heard Sam screaming something. As he touched the melted metal, Dean could see clearly the way Sam had let his emotions take over him and had released a powerful bolt of energy that had just ripped the chains off their bolts.

It was kind of cool, if it weren’t for the implications. It would be cool if it didn’t meant that Sam was letting go of his human side and using his powers to their full capacity.

Second step: getting to his stuff.

Dean was feeling like an old man, struggling to accomplish things that, on any other day, he would’ve done without much thought. He decided that the easiest way was to just take advantage of the wet floor and drag his ass there.

Using his legs and the leverage of his back against the wall, Dean struggled the three feet to reach the pile of his stuff. Arms closely tucked against his chest, stalwartly ignoring the tears being squeezed out from his eyes, concentrating on every inch that he managed to gain, he drew closer. It was a small victory, but still one that he celebrated, when Dean finally reached his things.

Stopping to catch his breath, Dean reached down with one crooked hand to rummage through the pile of discarded goods, searching for anything that might have survived the demons search. The jacket, having been discarded earlier by his tormentors, sat in a rancid pool that was a mixture of blood and water, practically saturated and for the moment, useless. While the ruined garment was regretful, it served a purpose; underneath the clothing, his shotgun remained fairly dry, protected by the rest when the boiler exploded.

Dean searched the jacket, silently praying that the demons hadn’t found the flasks of holy water that he'd swiped earlier. He would’ve taken a whole container of the stuff but, as it was, two flasks were easier to carry than a five-gallon container. After a gentle shake of the silver flasks, the sound of gentle sloshing made him sigh with relief. Well, at least that was something.

Feeling a bit like Popeye and his spinach, Dean unscrewed one of the bottles and took a sip. This was ridiculous.

Like before, he didn’t feel any different. The fresh water felt good going down his dry throat, but other than that… Dean shook his head. If nothing else, at least he could curse at the demons in a different language. That ought to confuse them for a while.

Storing both flasks in his jeans pockets, next Dean struggled with the gun. Again, a gesture that he had practiced his whole life, something that he could literally do blindfolded, was now next to impossible. His fingers lacked the strength and flexibility to press the tiny button on the Colt 1911 handle that would release the clip so that he could see how many bullets he actually had, if the demons had left him any.

Dean cursed, almost dropping the gun twice before being able to pop it open. Fortunately the demons hadn’t care for his weapons, dumping them as useless against them. The clip was full and he had two more in his back pocket. Still, none of it was even nearly enough for what he was facing.

Now the only thing left was getting to his feet.

Dean could jump over fences twice his height; he could go from a prone position to his feet using nothing but the forward momentum of shoulders and leg muscles; he could kick open locked doors; once he had even punched a hole through a solid wall. In his current condition, not to mention the deep cut that less than a day ago, Bobby had sewn closed, Dean's doubt as to what he'd be able to accomplish doubled.

Pushing himself upward, he overbalanced and the movement put all his body weight on the wrong leg. Dean yelped in pain as the world whited out momentarily. When the world came back into focus, he was on his knees, searing pain shooting through his body. “Fuck!” he shouted through gritted teeth.

An opened hand suddenly appeared in his field of vision and startled, Dean lost his grip on his weapon.

“Dean.” Castiel offered as a greeting. The helpful hand and the gentle word, however, had the opposite effect that its owner was probably going for.

This was it, Dean thought staring absently at the hand outstretched before him. Heart hammering inside his chest, he fought against the internal panic, knowing this had to be the moment when Castiel would deliver the news that Dean had failed to stop Sam and that the angels were coming to finish his brother off. And Dean could do nothing to stop him. Still, Dean took the proffered hand and the angel gently began pulling the hunter to his feet.

“Now’s really not the time Cas,” Dean said, trying to sound casual but knowing that the fear he was feeling inside showed in his voice. “Unless you’ve came to help, that is.”

The angel remained silent. Dean was screaming inside _Go away! Go away!_

“You must listen,” the angel said, carefully touching the arm that Dean had wrapped around his chest.

“Oh you gotta be kidding me! My brother is about to jump start the freaking apocalypse… and you wanna take time for a little chat?” Dean said, shrugging off the touch. “I know why you’re here,” Dean found himself whispering, hating the way his voice sounded so fragile and pleading.

“I did not come to kill Sam,” Castiel said, closing his eyes and slightly lowering his head, a solemn gesture that seemed out of place in their conversation.

Relief flooded Dean’s chest. The angel still hadn’t given up, still believed that Dean could do his part. It was strangely comforting to be trusted and believed like that.

“Then let me go. We have no tim-“

Dean completely lost track of what he was going to say when he realized what the angel had done. There had been a pingpingping noise in the background; some remnant of the blasted water pipes from earlier that Dean hadn’t even realized to be there until it stopped. But that hadn’t been the only thing stopping. Everything else, the sound of the fire outside, the thumping of the firefighters water jets, the screaming from upstairs, even the thoughts of everyone still alive inside that building, all stopped.

Dean looked around, startled by the silence. The water that had been slowly running down the walls was still, frozen mid motion of dropping to the floor like the law of gravity commanded it to do. Everything had stopped, like a snapshot of time.

“Did you just stop time?” Dean asked, feeling ridiculous just from formulating the question, but figuring that it was either that or he had just gone deaf and crazy. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen the angel messing with time before…

“How do you plan to pass the legion of demons guarding Lilith?” Castiel asked, ignoring the question.

Dean looked away for one second, foolishly hopping that a better plan than what he had so far would magically sprout itself in to existence. As it was, he had his flasks of holy water, his gut feeling that he needed to be there and little else.

“I was planning to dazzle them with my awesome six-pack,” he said sarcastically, looking at his less than appealing blood covered stomach. “I’m guessing that using you and your divine powers is out of the question?”

Whatever Castiel had done to give them time to talk would be very handy in stopping Sam. If only they could…

“I can not interfere,” Castiel said, looking pained to utter the words. “This… I should not be tampering with time at this junction, but it is important that you listen to what I have to tell you.”

“That’s just awesome… then I’ll just have to hope that the holy water soaking up the building and some consecrated iron rounds will be enough to weaken them…”

“That will not suffice.”

“Well, thank you for pointing out the obvious… got any suggestions?”

Castiel looked from the flask in Dean’s hands to his neck, from where the amulet was conspicuously absent. “You have already consumed the fluid… good.”

With the arrival of the angel and all the anxious feelings born of his presence, Dean had completely forgotten about the holy water. Had he been speaking Latin with Castiel all this time?

If that were the case, the angel didn't seem to care.

“What’s the point anyway? It’s not like they’re gonna sit around, patiently waiting for me to send them back to Hell!”

“You’ll need only to touch them.”

Dean looked at Castiel, searching for a give away that proved that the angel had finally found his sense of humor and this was all just a joke.

“You want me to do what?”

“Touch them.”

Despite the pain, despite the panic, despite the urgency and the bad feeling that was turning his stomach in to mush, Dean chuckled. In fact, he was finding it hard to not laugh out loud.

“You are definitely off your meds… They aren’t balloons, Castiel, and I sure ain’t no needle. I can’t just touch them and expect them to go puff!”

"Trust me... you need only to touch them."

"Yeah, trust you... because you were so right about the whole deal of Sam's suicide breaking the last seal. Do you realize how far off you were with that?" Dean accused the angel. "And now Sam is out there, ready to jump at the chance of killing Lilith and she can't wait to give him her neck, because THAT will release Lucifer!"

"He is the door and you are the red color that must paint it. He is the lock and you are the key. Sam's presence remains crucial for the breaking of the seal and rise of Lucifer, as is yours. The terms, however... I am aware of my mistakes," Castiel admitted, his head bowing in a gesture so human that he had surely picked it up from someone else. "We are not all-knowing, Dean. Like you, we must make our decisions based on what we know. And what we knew-"

The angel stopped himself, looking unsure of what to do or say for the first time since Dean had met him.

Dean's patience begun to dwindle, "Enough with the half-truths and the vague sentences. Tell me what the hell you're doing here; what the hell am I doing here. Just... just _tell_ me."

When Castiel raised his head and fixed his blue eyes on Dean, the human almost took a step back. So much pain and doubt... how could he had not seen that before when it was so painfully clear?

“Mary, your mother, was intended to bear only one child in her life,” Castiel said quietly, like he was telling a secret or a bedtime story.

Dean looked at the angel, confused. What was that supposed to mean and what the hell did it had to do with anything else?

“She and your father were suppose to have met each other and Samuel was to be the fruit of their love.”

Something started twisting and bending inside of Dean but on the outside, his face remained expressionless.

“If this is the part where you tell me that I’m adopted and John and Mary aren’t really my parents and that Sam’s not really my brother, just skip it. I don’t care about genetics; I don’t give a crap about it. Sam is my brother in every way that matters and nothing will ever change that,” Dean said, hoping that he had covered all bases and had stopped Castiel’s speech before it even started. He was sick and tired of these big revelations that seemed to fill his life these days. He wanted normal, he wanted everything to remain the same… he wanted to be himself and nothing else.

Dean was sure that Castiel’s next words would forever change that.

“When Mary was forced to make her deal with Azazel she doomed not only the fate of herself and her family, but the fate of all mankind as well,” Castiel went on, wanting more than anything to spare Dean of the knowledge of things that he knew the young man didn’t wanted to know. But now, as it had always been since before his conception, that was not his or Dean’s choice. “Measures were taken to make sure that Man had a chance to survive.”

“She wasn’t the only one making deals with Azazel at that time." Dean whispered, resisting the urge to cover his ears and start singing really loud. "There were others, others families, other children..."

“The other children weren’t fated to survive. The other children represented no threat to everyone’s survival. We might not have known what Azazel had ultimately planned, but we knew who would bring his plan forward.”

“You make it sound like Sam is an accomplice,” Dean accused. “You know what Azazel had planned,” he stated. Dean might not be able to see the angel’s thoughts but he could feel that some questions that Castiel had been carrying ever since they met, were now gone.

“There are some… ancient events to which not all of us are privy. Some dealings that concern only the highest of powers. The agreement that was reached between God and Lucifer, the law that was written before the Morning Star was trapped behind the seals, was very clear on the non-interference of both parties in the deciding events of the end of times. This I did not know.”

“And now that you do?”

“Azazel planned to use the vessel destined to release Lucifer for himself. It is a vessel that Heaven cannot smite and Hell cannot touch. He would be invincible.”

“And Lilith found out about it when she couldn’t kill Sam,” Dean confirmed, sick to his stomach. The simple fact that Sam had survived Lilith’s attack meant that he was doomed. How fucked up was that? “What does that make me in all of that?” Because if he wasn’t even supposed to be born, what was he doing there?

“You volunteered to be born.”

Dean blinked, paused and, inside his head, went through all the possible reasonable meanings for those words. He came up with nothing.

“Go me!” Dean sarcastically said, moving to throw a victory punch in the air before he remembered that his arm was a mess. “T'fuck does that even mean?”

“Sam's soul was tainted by Hell, which meant that Heaven was free to take the same kind of action. Action and reaction. Part of the law,” Castiel explained. “The commander of Heaven’s army offered a part of himself to be born on Earth and Mary had a second child who was to be born first. You.”

“No… stop… please,” Dean whispered. This was not something he wanted to hear. This was too much, too big for him, too far-reaching, too monumental to have anything to do with him. This was not him.

“It was a commendable gesture, a free choice the likes of which most of us will never know.”

Dean suddenly thought of the time he and Sam had butted heads over the existence or non-existence of angels. The argument stemmed from the murder of a misguided priest’s ghost who, at the time of his death on the church steps, thought he had earned his wings. The surviving priest they had talked to had told them about Michael, the archangel, the Heaven’s warrior, and leader of God’s armies. The idea had sounded as far far-fetched to Dean then as it did now.

Dean was having trouble filling his lungs. He breathed in and in, but the air seemed thinner, loaded with heavy burdens and duty and not enough oxygen. “How… how does that even work? Because I know I’m no angel and my middle name is not even Michael, so how the hel… why?”

“Calm yourself Dean,” Castiel said, managing to not make it sound like the most ridiculous thing to say. It was both advice and a command that Dean found himself obeying. “An angel's soul, its essence and grace is impossible to define or contain in any word that human ears can hear or human mouth can speak. It is immeasurable and omnipresent. It is all that we are but not what we are. Michael is still Michael and you are still Dean, and yet you both share a part of his light.”

Dean could feel himself spiraling out of control, stepping outside his own body and looking back at himself. An angel, one the most famous angels in all of the literature about the matter, had given him part of his light, part of himself.

Which made him part… no! That was one logic that he refused to follow. This meant nothing, this was just one more of the same freakiness to join all the other freakiness’s that were being dumped on his lap these last few days. This was just one more weapon that he would use now and deal with later, like the telepathy crap and the Latin nonsense.

“So… just touch them?” Dean confirmed, praying that the angel was right about this.

“Hurry,” Castiel said, before disappearing once more.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

It was like one of those arcade games, the ones where you go around in the dark, carefully bending 'round corners and gaining points whenever you blow off some zombie, or some alien or whatever the game wants you to fight.

In here, however, there were no extra lives and the big boss at the end of the level could very possibly be your own brother.

Dean felt all of his senses in high alert, eyes seeing so sharply that it hurt his head; ears hearing so far that his own breathing seemed monstrous; taste so accurate that he could savor the adrenaline on his tongue; smells so pungent that he could taste them in his mouth; touch so sensitive that he could feel the walls vibrating with the expectation of things to come.

The whole building was waiting. Waiting to burn to the ground; waiting to be the last thing standing when the world ended.

The first couple of demons that Dean found were facing away from him, more concerned with what was happening on the floors above than any threat that could come from bellow.

Dean moved stealthily, feet carefully treading the wet floor, more quietly than any human should be.

They still sensed him, turning too late, when Dean was already within reach. Dean didn’t touch them like Castiel told him to. He had no time.

Both demons reacted to his presence, startled to be caught off guard by a simple meat-puppet, and each grabbed one of his arms.

Dean felt himself tensing, muscles readying themselves for battle, flesh preparing for the bruising. None of that happen.

What did happen Dean would never be able to explain to the two humans that were suddenly staring at him, hands still wrapped around his biceps, suddenly confused, lost and scared of the screaming black smoke that surrounded all three of them.

Dean’s breathing hitched inside his lungs and he watched the smoke being sucked in to the concrete floor, finally vanishing in a cloud of sulfur and fire until nothing but ash was left. Just like that.

He hadn’t opened his mouth to say any magic words. He hadn’t concentrated really hard or visualized any bright lights. None of the new-agy, metaphysical, bells ringing crap that he might have expected.

Just touch and puff, just like he had sarcastically suggested.

The two men were looking at him like he had two heads. This was not a good time for Dean to open his mouth and start speaking to them in Latin, like he knew would happen if he tried. Figuring that they were as safe in there as they were outside, Dean just turned away and entered the elevator shaft that the two demons had been guarding.

The possessed men would eventually figure it out and he had bigger fish to fry.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

The elevator was painfully slow, but still faster than anything Dean could've made the other way around. The thought alone of mounting the two flights of stairs that would take him to the main floor was enough to exhaust him at this point. What had happen to the two demons bellow was still reeling inside his head. It was too surreal, too unlike him.

Dean Winchester liked to get his hands dirty; he liked getting the job done using something tangible, something that he could understand and control. Most of all, something that he could control.

He had no idea of what he was doing.

The cargo elevator came to a stop with a sudden jolt that rattled every bone inside the tired hunter. He used his foot to pull the door up, once more thanking whomever was in charge of the place for the well-oiled hinges and cables, because otherwise Dean would have a hard time getting out of there. As it was, the elevator's engine had already produced enough of a racket to call every demons' attention to his arrival.

There was no demon waiting for him outside and everything was oddly quiet. Waiting.

Warm orange tinted light spilling from the high windows on the surrounding walls of the warehouse gave the illusion of high noon on a bright summer day outside, even though Dean knew that it had to be closer to midnight than anything else.

Lilith’s victims had stopped moaning and squirming in their hanging places. Their job was done and the demon had finally let them go. Or she was already dead and their silence meant only that Lilith was no longer around to control their lives.

Dean tried to move faster, but he was walking wounded, his movements bordering on something more like an extra in Night of the Living Dead. For all accounts, he shouldn’t be walking at all.

The corridor in front of the elevator was deserted, eerily so. Dean could feel eyes watching him; he just couldn’t see the watchers. Sounds of screaming, swearing and growls were coming from somewhere on his left. Dean headed that way.

There were five men and two women at the far end of a side corridor that Dean just couldn’t walk around. He had no doubt that all seven of them were demons. Guard dogs. Waiting for him.

“Dean Winchester,” the taller one sneered. “Thought your brother told you to stay put downstairs.”

Dean braced himself, trying not to look as weak as he felt in front of the demons. They were just one more obstacle that he had to overcome in order to reach Sam. He couldn’t waste the time.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like he doesn’t have his fair share of trouble obeying orders.”

“I wouldn’t worry if I were you,” the demon on the left, a sweet looking old lady, said. “Where you’re going you won't have a choice but to obey.”

The second she raised her hand, Dean could feel the push of invisible power that was becoming annoyingly familiar. It sent him crashing sideways in to the near wall, sparks of pain igniting from his left arm as it collided with the plaster surface.

“Though you shouldn’t worry too much about that either,” the demon went on, getting closer. “Soon, very soon, down there and up here will be pretty much the same.”

Dean watched her and her buddies draw nearer, getting his breathing under control. The good thing about demons and Dean, as he was beginning to understand, was the fact that all of them hated him so much that neither could keep the kill a detached and impersonal act.

No, they all wanted to stand close, to brag to their other demons buddies about being the one to watch the light go out in Dean Winchester’s eyes.

It was kind of flattering. And the reason why they came too close.

The first one that raised one hand to touch Dean’s face in a mocked caress found out what a mistake that had been. She had no time to contemplate her mistake, her existence over in a snap of a finger.

Which ever of the demons was keeping Dean pushed against the wall just lost its control, because before Dean could rationalize that another demon had been turned in to dust in front of him, he was free from the wall.

The other four quickly found out that some prey just shouldn't be cornered. They couldn't back away in time before Dean was on them, throwing himself bodily in to the group. Ideally, if everything worked out perfectly, like it always did in the movies, Dean would've just reached one finger and lay down his new found mojo on the evil sons-of-bitches with all the style and grace of a Jedi knight. As it was, with the condition of his hands and the clicking clock over his head, Dean figured that skin was skin and, taking advantage of the amount of it that he was currently showing, Dean just threw himself at them.

The five of them fell on the floor in a tangle of limbs and curses, dazzled, stunned, watching as grey ash rained on them.

“Fute!” Dean let out, somewhat saddened by the fact that in Latin that didn’t sounded like a curse at all.

When he finally managed to once more climb to his feet, Dean wasted no time with the other four humans, writhing and barely conscious. His attention was on the two demons that had been smart enough to stay at a safe distance and where now making their escape around the corner.

Not wasting time to analyze how odd it was to see demons actually run away from him, Dean followed, ignoring the fact that the carnage only grew more gory and frequent as he drew closer to the center of the warehouse. It spoke clearly of the battle that had taken place in there, the battle he hoped was still far from over.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Thirty seconds.

That was all he would have needed. Thirty seconds sooner and all would've been so different.

It was Cold Oak all over again; only now, instead of arriving too late and being able to do nothing more than hold a dying Sam, he was arriving too late and watching Lilith die.

The corpses of the demons that had dare to stand in the way of Sam’s revenge lay on the floor, like discarded bread crumbs that led Dean’s way to the place of the last confrontation.

Sam. Naked from the waist up, was slowly advancing towards Lilith, red scribbling, too small for Dean to be able to read from that distance, displayed on his exposed skin like a shield.

Trapped between Sam’s looming figure and the wall, Dean almost pitied the demon.

Lilith was playing her part without flaw. She looked as if she'd tried to fight back at least a little, no doubt to maintain the ruse, but without use her demonic powers against Sam, she really was little more than a child, like the one whose body she now resided in.

She could, of course, just escape. Leave the corpse of the little girl behind, turn in to smoke and get away.

But she didn’t. And Sam, blinded by the nearness of his goal, failed to see her surrender and the smile of victory in her lips as Ruby’s knife plunged in to her heart and killed both demon and child.

Dean had hoped, even for a moment, that maybe Sam would use his powers instead of the demon-killing knife. He could just send Lilith back to Hell and be done with it. But Dean knew his brother, knew how he thought.

Sam was scared and tired. He just wanted this whole thing to end and with Lilith in Hell, Dean knew that Sam would not rest, worrying about the time when she would eventually manage to crawl topside and start everything all over again.

No, Sam would take no chances with that. And Ruby’s knife was still the only thing that Sam knew to be sure to kill a demon for good.

Lilith fell to the ground, dead even before her head touched the floor, and Sam turned back, somehow knowing that Dean was there, that he was watching him.

Dean couldn’t speak, tears filling his eyes as he saw the sincere smile on Sam’s face, his joy and happiness at believing that it was all finally over.

It was in that moment the world started turning upside down.

Light became darkness. Dark became light. Up became down. Silence was made of a horrible roar. Everything else was mute. The ground beneath Sam’s feet begun to crack and part, hot air and black smoke that stunk of sulfur coming from the edge.

And Sam screamed.

Dean snapped from his daze and raced to his brother, not really sure of what he would do but certain that he couldn’t just stand there and watch.

The floor was falling apart beneath their feet and yet Sam was still standing up, hands clutching his head like he was trying to keep it from exploding. Dean stopped at the edge of the hole, his eyes telling him that one more step forward and he would fall, his gut assuring him that he could go.

He went with his gut, still expecting to fall into the deep abyss that Dean knew would stop only in Hell. It was the most dizzying experience of his life, walking literally on nothing but air, feeling solid ground beneath his feet.

Sam had stopped screaming and looked at Dean when he got near. He had finally understood what was happening and Dean could see the fear in his brother’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Sam's mouth whispered, while his eyes screamed _I love you_.

Before Dean could say or do anything, Sam doubled over, his back arching up as a guttural, primal sound escaped his mouth.

At first Dean couldn’t see what was happening, so subtle it was, but little by little the illusion, the trick of the light became real and Dean could see two Sams, one bent at the waist in pain, the other standing straight and regal, both merging in Sam’s long legs.

Dean fell to his knees in front of Sam, supporting his head on his shoulder and grabbing his brother's arm with his semi-working right hand.

The faint burning sensation that he’d been feeling for awhile every time that Sam touched him, had increased tenfold. It was worse than scalding water; it was slightly less than being on fire. It was wrong, because this was his brother, this was the baby he’d seen grow into a man; this was his last link, his last connection with someone. This was the man he’d seen both born and die.

One of them was still all of that, was still Sam. The other wasn’t Sam at all.

Wisps of white smoke were rising from Sam’ skin, gathering at his back, slowly morphing in to a defined shape. Dean held on, unable to think or do anything else. If this was the end, he wanted to be near someone that he love and that he knew loved him back. “Repugna is malum Samuhel… repugna ei,” he whispered like a prayer, over and over, and over again. It didn't matter to him in which language it came out. What mattered was the sentiment beneath the words. The fact that Dean knew that his brother was a geek and could probably understand him was just an added bonus.

Sam wasn’t screaming anymore, just feeble whimpers that escaped his mouth without consent or recognition, trembling muscles that seemed to resent the fact that Sam was slowly breaking in two.

The white smoke was still flowing, growing taller and taller, taking shape, expanding, opening…

Wings!

Dean could almost see them now. Large feathered, luscious white wings that seemed real and ethereal at the same time.

The standing half of Sam, the one that wasn’t Sam at all, was becoming more solid, more real now too. Dean could see its face now. Sam’s face. It opened its eyes.

Dean knew who this was; the seal had been broken and the being standing above him could not be any other. He had expected some eye-color variation of the demons he’d seen so far. Maybe not black, because those he associated with lower-class demons and this being surely ranked more than black eyes; maybe white eyes like Lilith, or some version of yellow or red. Maybe something that they had never seen before, like pink or magenta.

But no.

They were Sam’s eyes, the same multicolor eyes that Dean always teased his brother about but secretly found unique. The Sam part that mostly emulated what Sam was. That mixture of colors, that every changing shade that translated so well Sam’s volatile personality and moods. They were Sam's unwillingness to fit a pattern, to be bottled and labeled.

The eyes had not changed color, but they were not Sam’s eyes. This was not Sam.

There was a light burning from inside this being that made it look all at once beautiful and terrifying.

God’s most beautiful angel. The Morning Star.

Dean had almost forgotten that they weren’t alone until he heard the collective gasp from the remaining demons. In between Sam’s outbursts of power in his chase of Lilith and word of Dean’s fight from the basement up, most had scattered away, trying to save their smoky selves. Now, knowing victory was at hand, smelling the fear in the skin of the humans, they were coming back.

The sight that greeted them was far better than most of them had dared hope for. Lilith had convinced them to do her bidding through fear. There were few demons amongst them that truly believed that she would be able to bring Lucifer back. And yet… there he was, his passing in to this world almost complete.

Dean paid them no attention. He didn’t know why, couldn’t even tell if it was just his imagination and need to hold on right now, but Dean knew that his hand around Sam’s arm was the only thing still keeping him there, still keeping Sam from being completely consumed by evil.

The demons had started circling them, half weary of the brothers’ presence, half awed by their master’s appearance. A couple of them kept their hateful gazes focused on Dean, undecided on whether to take advantage of his exposure, yet afraid to interfere with was going on.

Dean was painfully aware that if any of them decided to do something, all it would take was one raised hand and he would be hurled away from Sam. And that was the last thing that Dean could allow to happen.

Painfully aware of the weight of the chains holding his left arm to his chest, Dean pulled them from around his neck and tied them around Sam’s hunched figure, bounding them together. Whatever happened next, Dean would hold on to his brother, sheltering Sam, praying that he would be strong enough to keep him there.

When the pain started in his back, Dean didn’t even notice it at first. When it really started to reach hot, poking, blinding pain levels, he just assumed that one of the demons had finally decided to attack. When he saw, from the corner of his eye, the black smoke gathering at his back, he just assumed that it was one of the demons.

Dean closed his eyes, letting his sense of smell take control, losing himself in the only thing that he knew, his only certainty. Sam. His brother.

Dean just held tighter, his burning skin melting with Sam’s, wanting to crawl in to some place where they could both be safe and alone.

Dean escaped to Sam’s mind.

He never saw the black wings that had formed above his hunched figure. He never saw the shadow of a second body behind his. He never saw the flaming sword in the hands of the beautiful being at his back, nor the way it smiled at Lucifer like they were old friends, brothers.

Dean never saw the beginning of the second battle between Lucifer and Michael. And if at that moment he had, he wouldn’t have believed it.

They were in a desert. That much was easy to ascertain.

From every direction he looked, there was nothing to see but gravel and rocks. Not even a stray cactus disrupted the monotony of brown and red landscape.

And it was hot. Hot as hell.

Dean knew that he wasn’t in Hell. He’d seen Hell, felt it. This wasn’t it.

“Where are we?” Sam’s voice broke through Dean’s wandering thoughts. He sounded shaky, disoriented. He didn’t had anymore of a clue to where they were than Dean did. “Are we dead?”

Dean rose to his feet, dusting dirty palms on the denim of his jeans. The painful, handicapping wounds on his wrists were gone. His shirt was intact now, as was the skin that he could feel underneath the cotton. The black cotton that was starting to boil under the hot sun.

“I have no idea where we are,” he answered, offering a hand to get his brother off the dirt.

He knew where they were not. They were not at the warehouse anymore; their consciousnesses were now residing in this unfamiliar plain. For all Dean knew, the physical bodies that they had left behind, were now surrounded by the white wings of Lucifer, still rising, taking shape, heralded by his legions of bloodthirsty demons, who in turn would meet their death. Or, Dean thought again, maybe they were already dead and this was somewhere on the other side.

Was this Sam’s mind? When Dean had forced his way inside his brother’s head and taken the coward’s way out, where exactly had he dragged them both too?

Because the only other experience that he had was with Bobby and Bobby had taken him to familiar grounds, a place the older hunter felt comfortable in, safe. A home.

This was neither home, nor safe; it certainly wasn’t comfortable, not with the hot air sucking the life through their exposed skin. It wasn’t even a place they’ve ever been before.

“I know this place,” Sam said, shading his eyes with the palm of his right hand, gazing at the distance. “Let me see your watch,” Sam asked, holding out his other hand.

Dean looked quizzically at his brother before taking his watch off and handing it over. He couldn't be sure, but he could swear that the hooks had destroyed that watch too.

Sam took the watch and squatted to place it on the ground. When he looked up, eyes winking against the blare of light, he didn’t look happy. “I think we’re in Smoke Creek Desert, in California.”

“And we know this because…?” Dean probed on. There were no landmarks in sight; there was nothing but white-hot sky above them and a blood red landscape beneath their feet that stretched well beyond the horizon in every direction.

“Look at the compass on your watch,” Sam pointed out. The tiny metal arrow inside the compass, that by all rights should be pointing north, was dancing crazily around to every other direction.

“Magnetic soil?” Dean asked, picking the timepiece up and tapping his finger against the visor. The pointer quieted down a bit but still refused to point the right direction.

“Jessica and I came here once. She was taking a course in geology and-“ Sam stopped himself. It wasn’t the time to be dwelling in his happier past, in his long gone past. “There’s nothing around here for miles.”

"Doesn't really matter," Dean said, scuffing the dirt with the tip of his boots. It felt as real as Bobby's couch had felt before. "I don't think we're really here."

Sam looked at his older brother like he'd grown second head. When his face softened a bit, Dean knew he'd changed his assessment to the possibility that perhaps he was suffering from heat stroke. Sam kicked a rock with his boot, watched it fly for a couple of feet before landing in a small cloud of dust. "It looks a lot like we are here, dude."

Dean returned the stare. A minute ago, this was the Sam that had killed over twenty demons with nothing but the power of his mind, this was the Sam that was being consumed by Lucifer, slowly ceasing to exist as a human and becoming something else that would bring Hell on Earth. "What do you remember Sam?" He quietly asked.

Sam turned his eyes down, for a moment looking lost and scared. "I... I remember almost killing you; I remember fighting a bunch of demons, killing Lilith and after that, not much else," he confessed in a small voice. "What does this mean? Did we win? I mean, Lilith’s dead, there’s no way she could’ve finished breaking the seals, right? How did we end up here? How can I remember something that happen over six years ago with Jessica and not remember anything from just the past six minutes?!"

Dean was silent, avoiding his brother's eyes. Should he tell him? Would it actually do any good, besides freaking Sam?

"Something happened, didn't it? Something bad...did I finally turn evil? Did I hurt someone? God... I know something horrible happen... Tell me!"

"It didn't look like we were winning the last time I saw it, Sam," Dean confessed quietly. "You killing Lilith was the last seal to open Lucifer's coffin."

Despite the heat, Sam's face palled to almost white. "That's not possible," he whispered, the look on his face contradicting his words. It was possible, he just didn't wanted to believe that it had actually happened. "It's all over... I... what have I done?!"

Dean grabbed his brother' shoulders, gently shaking him until Sam met his eyes. "It's not over... whatever this is, we'll figure it out, together, ok?"

"No! NO! There's no figuring out left to do. You warned me, dad warned you... we didn't listen, we should've listened..."

"Sam! Knock it off!" Dean snapped, images of the bloody room where he had awoken earlier springing unbidden to his mind. "It's ok... you're ok."

"How can you possibly know that?" Sam said, sounding defeated. "I destroyed the world, Dean! Its' not something that we can ignore, it's not the body of some dead hunter that we can leave behind and hope that no one figures that I killed him... Because of me, there's no one else to come after us! Because of me, of what I am, of what I did..."

"Evil is in the choices we make Sam... you didn't choose this," Dean stated. He was aware of the choices that his brother had made, he was aware of the consequences, but Sam wasn't. Sam hadn't known what killing Lilith would do. No one had told him that. Dean hadn't told him that. "Besides, this isn't over yet. We're still here, we can still fight. We just need to figure a way to go back," Dean said, his voice filled with a surge of hope that he didn't really feel.

Judging by the sag of Sam' shoulders, he wasn't fooled by Dean's act either.

"Well, what we choose isn't always what we want, or what is right," Sam said sadly, his low voice echoing in the open space. "We should start moving."

“Where to?" Dean started, his eyes catching the change in the land around them. "Was that here before?” he asked, pointing at a shiny point at the distance. From that far, it looked like a light bulb on the floor, too small to be given a shape or propose. Whatever it was, however, it wasn’t part of the desert.

It was the only thing around. If nothing else, maybe it would be at least big enough to provide them with some shade.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o00

“In my dreams, I kill you all the time,” Sam said out of the blue, putting one foot in front of the other.

They had been walking for what felt like forever, headed towards the shimmering reflection up ahead. The house, because now they could at least see that it was somewhat house-shaped, was still in their line of sight but not looking like it was getting any closer.

Time itself seemed to not move in this place. Dean was sure that they had started walking well over three hours ago and still the sun had not moved in the sky. Their bodies remained stubbornly without producing shadow, stuck in some high noon loop.

“You quoting Moby at me now? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure the line isn’t quite like that,” Dean joked, hopping that Sam would joke back. He didn’t.

“In those dreams," Sam continued, "sometimes it’s just modified memories of hunts that we’ve been on and things go wrong. Sometimes it’s scenarios that I make up from scratch. It doesn’t matter, the result is always the same.”

Dean stopped to look at his brother. Sam’s gaze was lost in the distant horizon, not meeting him. “T'hell are you talking about?”

“I never feel ashamed or sorry when I do it, just freedom, absolution,” Sam added with a humorless chuckle. “I guess that deep down I resent you and what you are.”

Dean’s mouth was suddenly very dry. “Sam, you’re making no sense,” he said, his paranoid mind telling him that Sam knew, that somehow his brother had found out about what Castiel had just told him. He so did not wanted to deal with this right now.

“I mean, even God loves you more, why shouldn’t I resent you?”

“Sam-“

“No! He even handpicked you for some holy plan, a divine task that apparently only you can accomplish and me… I’m just the hottest thing in demon-land!”

Dean reached out to touch his brother’s forehead. It felt hot, but considering the blaze they were under, it didn’t said much. “Are you feeling ok?”

Sam shrugged off Dean’s touch, starting to walk again. “Why does God hate me, Dean?” Sam asked when his brother followed.

“God doesn’t hate you, Sam.”

“God doesn’t hate me?” Sam asked sarcastically. “What else am I supposed to think when this God of yours allows a freaking demon to bleed in to an innocent baby’s mouth? What guilt could I possibly carry at six months of age for Him to punish me like that?”

“How do you know about that?” Dean asked, stopping again.

“Oh, Dean! I know so much more than that,” Sam confessed with a sad, knowing smile. “I know what God wants you to do and if you knew half of the stuff I did while you were gone, you would’ve done it already.”

Dean grabs Sam’s arm, holding him in place, forcing his brother to stay there, to stay with him and not get lost in his thoughts. “What's this all about Sam?”

“I killed so many, Dean… so many,” Sam whispered. “So many men, women and children… some of them weren’t even doing anything wrong. Some of them weren’t even possessed.”

Dean could only stare in disbelief. He had read Sam’s journal, he knew what he was talking about, some of it anyway. But this… “Why are you saying this stuff?” He asked in a whisper. Was this fun for Sam, watching all the walls that Dean had carefully constructed, crumble like cheap plaster?

“No one’s around Dean, no one to judge you,” Sam said, trapping his brother in his gaze. “Just pick a rock and smash my head in. Wouldn’t that be fitting? Wouldn’t that be poetic? Our very own version of modern day Cain and Abel! Or maybe use Ruby’s knife, woul-“

“Stop! What the hell is wrong with you?”

Sam sighed, like he was tired of always explaining the same thing and Dean never quite getting it. “Mom died because of me-“

“Sam…” Dean tried to warn him before Sam went down that road.

“Dad died because of you!” Sam went on, like Dean hadn’t spoken at all. “We’re cursed, you know? Everyone around us ends up dying… we shouldn’t’ve been born at all.”

Dean wanted nothing else but for Sam to shut up. Because Sam didn’t even know about their grandparents and the part that he had played in their demise. Because deep down, Dean couldn’t help but agree with Sam’s words.

“What is this all about?”

"This is about doing what's right Dean."

Dean snorted without a trace of humor.

"Like we haven't been beating that stray dog all of our lives," he let out in frustration. "What do you want to do? Just lay back and wait for the end to come?"

Dean bit his lip. He had no right to throw that in his brother's face. He had been the one escaping reality; he was the one that didn't want to stick around and watch as his brother became Lucifer. And now he was the one who's conscience was nagging him to keep fighting, to not give up.

"We could, you know," Sam said quietly, putting to words Dean's thoughts. "We'll only be returning to our deaths, there's nothing else that we can do. Maybe this is our reward, maybe this is our safe heaven."

Dean shook his head. This was no safe heaven, this whole place felt wrong and thinning, like sand in an hourglass. The urge to move forward and do something was getting stronger by the minute, like he was wasting time that he didn't know he needed.

"No. I'm going to see what's up with that house. If there's even a remote chance that we can get back, a remote hope that we can still do something, I'm not gonna waste it," Dean said resolute. "You coming?"

0o0o0o0o0o0o

"Don't you ever give up?" Sam asked after awhile. Their feet were sore, their mouths had passed the point of being dry and both were sunburned beyond what could ever be comfortable.

"Do you?" Dean asked sarcastically. Every time that Sam opened his mouth in this place, Dean had learned to fear it.

"I tried to, when you were gone."

And there it was, Dean thought. The reason why, more than the others, he didn't wanted to hear this conversation. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"A month after you died, I rented a garage, closed the door, sat on the Impala, started the engine and waited for the end," Sam said in a monotone voice, matter-of-factly.

"God!" Dean let out, stopping on his tracks. The world tilted on its axis.

That word alone brought a reaction out of impassive Sam. He chuckled, like it was the best joke ever. "God? God had nothing to do with it. He waited for three more fucking months before lifting a finger, Dean!"

Dean sucked in a deep breath like he was sucking tar through a tiny straw. "What happened?" He asked, because he was too scared to ask the question: Why aren't you dead?

Sam chuckled, the sound abrasive and mirthless; a resonance Dean was learning to hate. "Strangely enough, the car saved me. The freaking car, Dean! Because I couldn't stand the idea of my body rotting on the Impala' seats, ruining the leather forever... that freaking car was my last connection to you and I couldn't bare the thought of soiling it like that..."

"Sam..." Dean started. He wanted to touch Sam, offer something in return; even if now was already too late.

Sam didn't want to be touched. He wasn't saddened by what had happened. He was mad. He was angry. Dean backed away.

"All of our lives, we've done nothing but God's job for Him, and when we needed Him, when a single blink from above would be enough to help us carry on, it's an old car that saves me... how can you keep on fighting for someone like that?"

"I'm not fighting for God, Sam. This isn't what this is all about."

Sam stood closer, two steps that took him straight in to his brother's personal space. "Then who are you fighting for?"

Dean looked at his brother like he was staring at a complete stranger. Hadn't that been obvious throughout Sam's whole life? Hadn't he proven time and time again for whom he fought?

"What happened to you, Sam? This isn't like you. This isn't you," Dean whispered, hoping that whatever fluke was affecting his brother in this place would just stop or simply grow tired of using Sam's mouth.

"People change Dean," Sam said darkly. He looked almost pleased with that fact. "We all change."

Dean took a step back, suddenly uncomfortable with Sam's proximity.

"No one changes to the point that they’re not themselves anymore," Dean said defensively. He tried to listen to Sam's thoughts, something that he had found too taxing to try before. But now... now he needed to make sure that this was really Sam.

It was like staring at the sun.

Dean gasped and bent over, knowing that his eyes had not been exposed to the bright light and heat that his mind had glimpsed, but feeling blind all the same.

"Dealing with a power like this... it does things to your soul, Dean," Sam went on, like nothing had happened. "_Abyssus abyssum invocat_... do you know what happens when you let yourself fall in to that abyss, Dean?"

"No," Dean whispered, forcing the pain away. He wasn't sure if he was answering the question or vocalizing some deeper denial inside himself. Because this thing in front of him was not Sam. It couldn't be.

"No, you wouldn't," notSam said, sounding genuinely saddened by that fact. "You let yourself fall in to that darkness and soon enough, you find out that in the dark is where you've always belonged."

Dean ground his teeth. He didn't needed two guesses to know who this was. Who this had been all along. Lucifer.

"Where's my brother? Where' Sam?"

The Morning Star let out that hideous chuckle again, turning joyful eyes -Sam's eyes- to look at Dean. "Took you long enough, didn't it?" It mocked him. "Not a problem... we're here now."

Dean wandered why he wasn't wetting himself in fear. This was the most famous of all demons, the most powerful, the one being that he knew he couldn't possibly defeat and yet, Dean felt calm. Resolute.

He forced himself to tear his gaze from notSam and look ahead. They had arrived at the house, which was odd, considering that they hadn’t moved at all.

The shimmering that had attracted them there, like moths to the fire, was caused by the particular kind of door that the house had. The cottage was nothing out of the ordinary, a simple structure with four walls and darkened metal serving as a roof. However, there were no windows that Dean could see, there was no chimney, no other exits or entry points besides the door in front of him. A mirror door.

“This is where you make your choice, Dean Winchester,” Lucifer whispered in his ear, seductively, luring. “Stay here with me and be safe, or go through that and face the end of the world.”

Dean could see himself and Sam on the mirror. Not these versions of themselves that had spent too much time in the desert’ sun, not this Lucifer’s version of his brother or his own grief stricken face.

Dean could see their other selves. The ones that had been left behind in the middle of the battle.

They were huddled together, hugging, like two little kids, lost in the middle of a storm, with nothing else to hold on to but each other.

Dean could see himself, standing tall and protective, black wings spread like shadows behind his back, flaming sword in his right hand. Only it wasn't really him.

Dean could see Sam, standing defiant and proud, white wings spread like smoke behind his back, menacing beams of light in his hands. Only it wasn't really his brother.

Smoke and shadows. That was all they were.

The real battle wasn’t being fought in that warehouse. The real battle wasn’t to be fought by Michael anymore. Not this time.

Dean knew what he had to do. He was calm, prepared. This was why he had been brought back; this was why an angel had given him part of himself; this was why he'd spent forty years in Hell. This was why it had to be him.

Because Lucifer had left the third option out.

“You think you can defeat me?” Lucifer asked, his presence all around Dean, his words like honey against his hot skin.

Dean lowered his head. He had nothing but his bare hands. Could he possibly put them around Sam's neck and squeeze?

_Michael Archangele,_

_Defende nos in proelio_

“Last time it took all of the angels in God’s army, and still they only managed to lock me behind bars. You think you can do better alone?” The words were like fire, teasing and burning with their meaning.

Dean ignored the words invading his mind and let the fire consume him. This wasn’t Lucifer. This wasn’t Sam. This was his leap of faith.

_Contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli proesi Dium_

_Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos_

“You can join me, you know? You and me, brothers like before. Before God’s interference." A touch on his back, an open hand holding and pushing at the same time.

Dean could feel his skin crawl with building energy; his ears rang with increased pressure. On the other side of the door, the smoke was slowly smothering the shadow. Michael was losing this time around.

_Qui ad perditionem animarum pergantur in mundo_

_Divina virtute, infernum detrude_

“Deep down, you know Dean, you know that you’ll always love me more than you love God… a God that you don’t even believe in.”

Dean turned; ready to face his destiny, to face Lucifer and his all too sweet voice, his all too warm touch. He was met by six year old Sam. “You son of a bitch!”

The child smiled, little dimples carving his chubby cheeks. “Didn’t think I was going to make this easy for you, did you Dean?”

Ruby’s knife, the one that he had barely acknowledged as being in Sam’s hands, had fallen to the ground, too heavy for such small fingers.

“This was God’s mistake. He thought that using you would make me weaker, less able to take over Sam. Too late He will realize that it is exactly the opposite. You, Dean Winchester, the only who could, will never lift a finger against me,” Lucifer bragged, his voice losing all sweetness and becoming vile and hurtful.

Dean look back at the door, for a split second considering opening it and going away. Sam’s eyes met his. The real Sam, his real eyes. The real Sam chained together to the real Dean.

He could see the permission in there, the urge to fulfill a long ago promise. Dean grabbed the knife and in a single fluid motion, stabbed the child that had been his brother.

Lucifer gasped in surprise, looking at Dean’s hand, pressed against his heart, where he had plunged the blade to its hilt.

“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry,” Dean said, over and over and over again, watching as the kid that he had walked to school, the small boy that he had to trick in to taking a bath, closed his eyes and sagged in his arms. “I’m so sorry.”

There was no one to listen anymore.

Dean knew that this wasn’t Sam. Dean knew that, at some level, this wasn’t even him there. Still, it hurt deeper than anything he had ever felt. It still made his eyes shimmer, until all he could see was the reflection of light on water.

Dean knelt down, holding the child in his lap, one hand behind his back, the other caressing the soft hair. The knife stuck out in Sam's chest like a proudly raised flag, one that Dean couldn’t bare to take down. There was no blood; there was no evidence that a fatal wound had been dealt. Just the emptiness, the lack of life.

He looked at the door, somehow his reflection and the reflection of what was happening in the real world mixing together and overlapping. Nothing had changed.

“Nonononono…”

This was supposed to be it. Dean wasn’t sure of what would happen after he proved Lucifer wrong, but he was sure that somehow, it would help the fight on the other side of the door. But it hadn’t. “This was supposed to be over!” He cried out, angry at fate, angry at a deity that he didn't understand, angry mostly at himself.

The sun moved then. Just barely, almost imperceptibly. Just enough for its light to reflect on the mirrored door.

Dean watched in fascination, trapped in the vision of the light crawling down, a beam stronger and stronger moving until it was in front of him. Dean closed his eyes, felt the tears running down his cheeks and turn in to vapor even before they hit the ground. He knew what would happen next. It was the missing piece that would make it all worth it.

The beam of sunlight left the mirror, like it had gained form and weight, like a spear, straight to Dean’s heart.

Dean was glad when he felt it pierce his skin and stop his existence.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

The fireman entered carefully, sneaked glances behind to see if the others were following. His mask-covered eyes scanned the gloomy room, taking in the bodies scattered over the floor and hanging from the ceiling.

Swallowing his emotions, he forced himself to search for familiar faces, the faces of his family. The heavy mask was restricting his peripheral vision and trapping the sweat in his face and eyes. Bobby pulled the whole thing off, taking an experimental breath. The air tasted like death.

He had only a couple of minutes before the real firemen finished their security checks and came inside too. Deciding that he had no time to check each body carefully, Bobby just blurred them out and moved to the center of the mess, the place where more bodies seemed to be gathered. If he knew the Winchesters well, Bobby was sure that was where he would find them.

He tried Dean's cell again, ignoring the way his fingers kept trembling. Too much time had passed since he had received Dean's message to trigger the bomb. The plan was to blow it up and wait for the boys outside. That had been over an hour ago. There was no way things had gone according to plan with that much time going by; and there was no way in hell Bobby was staying outside waiting any longer.

Bobby didn’t have to look much further. Dean might’ve not answered his cell, but he gave the older hunter a much better home beacon as a guide.

The beam of light that shot through the large place was like nothing Bobby had ever seen. It wasn’t some artificial light, he could clearly see that; it had none of the coldness and rawness that artificial lights that bright usually did; it didn’t hurt his eyes and he was staring right at it. In a sense, it was a natural light, a beautiful, warm light.

And it was coming right from Dean’s arched chest.

The young man had his eyes closed, arms clenching Sam’s, chains dangling around them, both looking as unaware of what was going on as the rest of the world outside.

Before Bobby could process the oddness of it all, or even panic for what it meant for the young man, the beam went straight through Sam’s chest.

The light became so bright after that, that Bobby could no longer see anything but the dark silhouette of the two brothers, merging together like they were the same entity. And then he couldn’t see anything at all because some things were never meant for human eyes and Bobby was forced to close his.

As unexpectedly as it had arrived, the light was gone, leaving the world darker, colder and with two Winchester slumped on the floor.

Bobby forced his eyes to open as soon as he dared. He needed to see what had happen. He needed to see them.

It looked like a bomb had gone off, leaving behind a deadly peace. A giant eraser that had taken away the pain and wrongness that had gathered in that place.

The older hunter was struggling to find the strength to draw nearer, fearful of what he would find when he knelt beside the boys and put a finger on each of their throats.

Sam and Dean were tangled in one another, from the waist up exposed flesh bound by bloody chains, arms wrapped around one another, just holding on to one another. They looked like marble statues. They looked dead.

"They still breathe," a voice, gentle and calm surprised Bobby out of his staring. "We must take them away from here."

Bobby looked at the angel that he'd come to know through Dean. The ethereal being looked dog-tired, worn and weary, beyond boundaries that should not be known by heavenly creatures.

"Did they do it?" Bobby found himself asking. It was hard to conceive any kind of victory with so much death surrounding them.

"They did... they had no other choice," Castiel replied, grabbing a piece of metal chain that fell to the floor at his touch. Free from the metal binding them, the two brothers rolled off one another, twin warriors fallen on the battlefield. Castiel grabbed Sam and hoisted him up effortlessly, as if the hunter wasn't bigger and heavier than him.

Bobby grabbed Dean, the young man's head bobbing back, bonelessly, free of the burden of consciousness. Beneath both of them, the floor was dusted with red dirt and two single feathers. One white, one black. Two equally beautiful feathers one of the purest white and the other the darkest black. "Where do we go?"

"Home," the angel answered.


	14. Chapter 14

It started out simple enough. You know, the same way major car wrecks start simple. You have an itch on your leg, you lose two seconds deciding if you wanna scratch it or not and Bang! Thirty-car pile up.

So, you know, simple.

It was only fair that it ended simple enough too. Like bugs squashed against the windshield, inconsequential, unimportant, unmentioned as the thirty cars that crashed get untangled and sent for scraps.

So simple that, for the rest of world, it was like it didn’t even happen at all.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

“… _and the shocking news that left America in deep grief since the past weekend, still remain shrouded in mystery. Almost a week after controlling the fire that threatened to consume the old Bentley &amp; Assoc. Offices in downtown Chicago, the over two hundred bodies discovered inside are still being recovered. Authorities have yet to advance any additional comments on the tragic events of last Sunday. Hours after the fire department’s gruesome discovery, Superintendent of Police John Weiss’ talked to the press, assuring the citizens of Chicago and the families of the discovered victims that all in his power would be done to provide a swift identification of the bodies and efficient restitution of the remains to the stricken families. Despite the delays verified, official authorities maintain the initial reports that this was not an act of terrorism. Mass suicide and cult related crimes are still on the table as possible explanations of why this many people were locked inside the abandoned building. Group representatives, despite the reports of occult engravings and other paraphernalia discovered both inside and near the building, have denied satanic connections and take no responsibility for the occurrence. The Chicago Fire Department is still investigating the possibility of arson with a strange chemical as to the origin of the strange fire. We remind our viewers that, despite burning for most of Saturday’s afternoon and part of Sunday’s dawn, the building as suffered little to no dama-“_

Bobby killed the TV’ sound when he saw Sam coming downstairs.

“They still talking about it?” Sam asked, a plate with untouched scrambled eggs and toast in one hand and a glass full of orange juice in the other.

“Yeah… that was quite a mess we left behind. People will want answers for this one, and I doubt the authorities will be able to provide much,” Bobby said, scratching his beard. For two days straight that was all the news would talk about. The strange fire in Chicago, the unburned building and the massacre that was found inside. There had been no mentions of dangling chains or tortured people, but Bobby figured that that would be the one thing that they would keep tightly under wraps. “He still not eating?” He asked, pointing at the full plate in Sam’s hands.

Sam sighed, doing a quick detour through the kitchen to drop the offending food before he joined Bobby in the older hunter’s living room. “It’s been three days since he got out of the hospital, Bobby, and he still hasn't eaten a thing.” he said, running a hand through his unwashed hair. “He can’t keep this up for much longer…”

“We don’t know all of what happened, Sam,” Bobby offered, the implication that, for all they knew, this could all be perfectly normal, clear as if it had been spoken. “Just give him some more time.”

“I just got him back,” Sam said, words sounding dangerously close to a sob. “And now I’m losing him all over again.”

It was Bobby’s turn to sigh. If this was what victory tasted like, he was scared to know what defeat would look like.

He and Sam had been there in the end, but to be honest with themselves and with one another, neither knew exactly what had happened.

Sam had told Bobby about the trap set by Lilith and Ruby, told him about what he'd almost done to Dean and what he had done to Lilith. After that, things were a little fuzzy to him, but Sam knew that his actions had veered in the opposite direction of his intentions and he knew that, somehow, Dean had prevented Lucifer from crossing over.

What Sam didn't know was how Dean had managed it: What price had his older brother paid so that the world wouldn't suffer the consequences of Sam's foolish actions?

Remorse and shame were heavy competitors with whom the young man had to struggle everyday after that final battle, but the not knowing, the not being able to feel Dean’s familiar pat on his shoulder telling him that everything would be alright, that was worse, so much worse.

What Bobby had seen, he still had trouble believing or even putting in to words. Still he told Sam the basic facts and let the younger man draw his own conclusions as Bobby had been doing ever since he had had time to stop and think. What he left out were the things that were neither his place to tell, like Dean's mounting abilities, or the things he had felt, like the feeling of that evil presence in that warehouse that had just vanished when Dean had literally burst in to light.

Castiel had been there too, in the end, but he had offered little information. Other than assuring the older hunter that the seals were now safe and that the end of the world had been avoided for now, he had but assisted Bobby in taking the boys to the car and after had simply vanished.

And Dean…

“Has he said a word to you yet?” Bobby asked, even though he could already figure the answered by Sam’s defeated posture.

"He barely looks at me," Sam said, closing his eyes against the worry and shame. They should be celebrating; they should at least be taking it a little easy. Instead, they couldn't catch a damn break. "Do you think something happened to him, to Dean's mind?" He asked, absentmindedly biting a nail. Wide, frightened eyes suddenly met Bobby's as a new though entered his concerned mind. "God! Do you think I did something to him? Maybe that's why-"

"Take it easy Sam," Bobby said, his tone quiet and undemanding. It was eating at his curiosity too, to know how the light that he'd seen had stopped the end of the world, but Bobby had seen enough to know that there were some things that he would never figure out. Sam would not accept that fact as easily. "Whatever happened in the place, we'll just have to wait and see and be there for your brother when he's ready for us to be there for him. And he will need you to keep it together, Sam."

Bobby knew that he was playing dirty, using the brothers' love for each other as a weighting point, but after the week he'd had, Bobby would take anything.

After Castiel's disappearance, Bobby had been left with two unconscious grown men in the Impala, a city that was in high alert for anything strange and the unwavering notion that, despite the urgency of the wounds he could see on Dean, he would have to drive them out of there before anything else.

His mind still reeling from everything that he had seen, Bobby reverted to his safe grounds and had splashed holy water over the two Winchesters, sighing in relief when, at least that, revealed them as normal.

But the older hunter knew that they were anything but normal. He wasn't even sure if they were human at all, at that point. Still, they were family and they needed help. Despite what Castiel had said, Bobby didn't take them home, he drove them to a small hospital outside Chicago, pushing the car's engine to the limit.

The staff at the clinic had frowned a little at the origin of the boys unusual wounds, particularly Dean's, but refrained from taking action when Bobby flashed them an FBI badge. That did it... well, that and one look at Dean's damaged wrists. No more questioning glances ensued as they immediately whisked Dean away to surgery.

Sam, as it turned out, was in much better shape. Aside from the small cuts and bruising he was ‘just’ suffering from deep exhaustion, which, judging by the number of bodies that Bobby had encountered and by Sam's vague retelling of how he fought his way to Lilith, he wasn't a little bit surprised at the boys' need for rest.

The sunburns on both Dean and Sam's faces were something that no one could really explain.

After that it had all been a game of _'just in case'_.

The orthopedic surgeon that had been in charge of Dean's case had been cautiously optimistic about the amount of lasting damage caused by the wrists’ wounds, advising 'uncle' Bobby to take Dean -Justin- to a neurologist _'just in case_' his nephew lost any feeling or movement in his hands; Sam had refused to lay in a proper bed and give himself the rest he so desperately needed, stubbornly remaining at Dean's bed side, _'just in case_' his brother woke up from the anesthesia coherent enough to recognize him.

On the dawn of the third day at the hospital, Bobby had sneaked a very drugged and semi-conscious Dean out of the hospital, _'just in case_' someone wised up to the fact that FBI agents had access to their own medical facilities and didn't needed the undercover crap story that Bobby had fed them and called the cops on them anyway.

The journey back to Bobby's place had been a silent one, with Sam finally catching up on his rest and Dean, blessedly, in morphine-dream-land. Neither had talked much after that and Dean, although conscious, hadn't spoken at all.

"How are you holding up?" Bobby asked Sam when the younger man finally stopped his fidgeting and sat on the couch next to him with a tired sigh.

The dark smudges under Sam's eyes had yet to soften, deep grooved valleys competing with the lines of concern looking forever carved in his forehead. The growing stubble, result of Sam's lack of patience or willingness to grab a good shave, added too many years to a face that was supposed to be young. In contrast, the sunburn that had eventually graduated in to a slightly peeling tan, made it look like Sam had returned from a Caribbean vacation.

Sam refused to meet Bobby's eyes. He did not wanted the older man to see the guilt there, did not want him to see the shame, because then Bobby would've tried to argue that none of this had been his fault and that he shouldn't blame himself. Right now, guilt and shame were the only things that Sam had, and he was clinging to them with the despair of a drowning man. Because if he couldn't feel those, he wouldn't feel anything at all and that scared him more than anything.

Sam couldn't remember how it had all ended, but he could not forget how it had all begun. When he closed his eyes, all that he could see was Dean hanging from the ceiling. When he looked at his own hands, all he could see was red from all the blood he had shed in that warehouse. So many had died by his hand, in so many horrible and brutal ways and yet all that he had to show for it was peeling skin...

"I'm ok Bobby... I'm just fine."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Bobby knew that Dean wasn't asleep even though the young man had his eyes closed. It wasn’t like this was the first time that they played this game.

"Don't bother pretending," he said point blank. Bobby had never been one to coddle anyone, particular those he loved. "Just came to give this back," he said, idly running his thumb over the ridges of the amulet's face, the trinket warm from his palm. With Dean's back to him, Bobby put the golden necklace on the bedside table. "Forgot about it, you know, in all that confusion of end of the world and mad rush to the hospital, not knowing what was wrong with you or Sam."

Dean remained silent, his back rising and falling methodically in mock slumber.

Bobby sighed. "Sam's getting all worked up, you know," he said, hoping to coax the young man out of his shell using his brother. "Heck, between my bad acting and your mind reading, I'm sure you know that I'm worried too."

The old hunter's gaze roamed the room a moment, searching for more, anything that would break the self imposed silence that the elder Winchester seemed determined not to break. He sighed tiredly when the peeling wall paint and the mess of discarded cloths offered no inspiration.

"We won, kid! Against all odds, against all prospects, we won... and now we need you to find the strength to come out and celebrate with us, Dean."

In a sudden and rare display of raw emotion, the words came out husky and worn. Not since Dean's death, had he felt this sense of hopelessness...

But to no avail, his words seemed to hang idly in the quiet of the room. Finally, he lay a gentle hand on the younger man's shoulder before leaving. "Just come out and celebrate with us... or this won't feel like a victory at all, Dean."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

The door closed and Dean opened his eyes. The pull to answer his brother and Bobby, to accept the food and comfort that they were offering, to connect with them somehow, some way, was strong, almost impossible to resist. But right now, Dean couldn't.

He knew his brother needed him with his shit together, and he certainly knew that for someone that had prevented the world from ending, he was being a whinny bitch. But Dean. Could. Not. Help. It!

Every emotion, every shattered feeling, every single piece of crap revelation that he'd been dealt for the past few days, on top of his returning memories of Hell, had just come crashing on him the second Dean woke up in the hospital. Emotionally disoriented and half crazy with pain, the other half just lost in the haze of drugs, he struggled to understand the hours before he awoke in the hospital. Through it all, Sam's presence, Sam' smell and familiarity was all around him, driving him back to the last thing he could remember: A kid who looked just like Sam, lying dead in his arms.

It had just been too much to handle and Dean reacted the way he knew best. He shut down. To the world, to himself, to anything that might add to his distress. And the fact that that was a reaction that he could not control only added to Dean's distress.

_'I know you're there, you know_,' Dean thought, sensing the presence inside the room even before Bobby had left.

"It was not meant to be a secret," Castiel answered anyway, crossing his arms and leaning against the window ledge.

The early morning light streaming through the window surrounded the angel, hugging his form. He looked taller than Dean remembered him, his skin darker, the hair longer. The voice, the familiar cadence that the angel always imprinted in his speech, those remained the same. But there was something otherworldly about his looks now, a light of his own that seemed to counterbalance the one coming from outside. His wings, feathers of a clear grey color, were almost visible behind his back.

_'So that's how you really look_,' Dean ventured, guessing that he was looking at Castiel's true form. '_What happened to the holy-tax-accountant?_'

Castiel smiled, the gesture more real now that he was using his own lips. "He went to feed his fish."

Dean chuckled despite himself. Normal lives, normal stuff to do, like feeding your pets. And he was having a conversation using his mind, with the angel in his room. The two realities seemed hardly related. Dean cleared his throat and forced his lips to form words. "So... you've came to say goodbye?"

Castiel nodded, leaving the window and closing the distance between him and Dean's bed. He sat at Dean's feet, hands in his lap, eyes on the double casts on Dean's wrists. "My mission here is complete."

After struggling upright, Dean lay his head back against the headboard, his eyes following Castiel's gaze to the white casings that encompassed his still healing broken limbs; Dean sighed. The appendages lay on either side of his reclined body, swelling from the surgery still evident; the limbs were useless for the moment. Maybe forever.

It was a bitch to try and do anything without the use of his hands but somehow, that was the least of his problems now. "So, back to Heaven, hum?" He asked, shifting uncomfortably under the angel's quiet scrutiny.

"How is Sam?" Castiel asked, deflecting Dean's question. "He looked burdened last I saw him."

The move was not lost on Dean, nor was the sadness that he felt hidden inside the angel. "Sam is safe," was the first thing that came to Dean's mind. “He is safe, isn't he?"

That at least had to be true. Dean had felt when the light bursting out of him had pierced Sam and destroyed the demon's hold on his brother' soul.

"Lucifer was pushed back behind the seals, the lock is secured and your brother's powers are gone," Castiel reassured him. "But that does not make him safe... that does not mean that your mission is complete."

"My mission," Dean whispered. His mission had been to keep Sam safe from harm and he had failed so many times. He could feel the flesh giving away beneath the pressure of the blade in his hands, could see the surprised look in young eyes as life ebbed away in less than a blink. "My mission is too big for my abilities."

Castiel's hand closed around Dean's covered calf, the warmth and comfort of the touch losing none of its strength despite the sheet and blanket in between them. Dean looked at the angel, finding the contact strange and familiar at the same time. The darkness that had been his constant companion ever since Chicago receded, if only a bit.

"You stopped Lucifer from entering this world, you stopped your brother from becoming his slave, from losing himself in a pit of darkness from which he would have never climbed out... and still you think you failed."

"I stabbed Sam in the chest... I killed him," Dean said, cursing his cast hands that didn't let him use his fingers to squeeze and push back the tears that were falling down his eyes.

"Not all that Lucifer showed you was real, not all that happen was an illusion, but it was Lucifer whom you stabbed, no matter who's appearance he was wearing at the time," Castiel reminded him.

Dean sniffled, disgusted at himself for reacting like this. "Yeah, well, he happened to look a lot like Sam at the time."

Castiel lowered his head and sighed before he got up, a gesture that Dean could swear the angel had learned from him. The wings on his back shook, translating the same frustration that he would not allow to show on his face.

"I never got to thank you," Dean said quietly. If this was the last time he was to see Castiel, some things shouldn't be left unsaid. "For what you did in the warehouse."

Castiel paused, his face looking out the window.

"Bobby told us that all the demons were dead by the time he got there. Last I recall, there were still quite a few ready to rip my lungs out..." Dean stopped himself, watching the way in which the angel's shoulders stiffened and his feathers literally ruffled.

Castiel remained silent, knowing that Dean would draw his own conclusions.

And Dean did, because he could remember Castiel telling him that he could not interfere, that in fact, he'd been ordered not to. All of a sudden, Dean knew why Castiel had changed the topic when it came to his return to Heaven. "You ain't going back to Heaven, are you?"

"I am not."

"You're actually being punished for helping us?" Dean angrily asked. The idea seemed as absurd to him as blaming a bald guy for not using shampoo.

"I am not being punished," Castiel said, finally turning to face Dean. The look in his eyes told a different story from his mouth. "I disobeyed an order and I am being given the time to ponder on the wisdom of my actions."

“Sounds a lot like being punished to me,” Dean mumbled, pissed at the fact that really no good deed went unpunished. And that the good deed was responsible for saving his and Sam’s lives, not to mention the rest of Humankind, only made him feel guilty about it.

“Maybe the Big Guy was actually rooting for us to lose, you know,” Dean said dejectedly.

“It is not a game of win or lose, Dean,” Castiel said, turning to face his human charge once more. The last time. “It is about fulfilling each ones part in the web of events that makes life, existence possible.”

“Fate sucks, Castiel,” Dean offered petulantly. His certainly seemed to. What happiness could one take of a fate that forced him to go against everything that he had fought his whole life?

“Fate sucks,” the angel agreed, much to Dean’ surprise, “but it is also inescapable.”

Dean smiled. An angel saying stuff like _fate sucks_ was not something he ever thought to see.

“Why do you smile?”

Dean looked fondly at the heavenly being that he’d grown to respect.

“No wonder the Boss is giving you a time off… I think we broke you, man.”

Castiel smiled in return. _Not all sorrow is met with tears, not breaks are regretful. It was a pleasure to have met you, Dean Winchester._

And in the next blink of the eye, he was gone.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

“He’s gone!” Sam announced out of breath. Bobby's head emerged from the red Ford pickup that the man was working on.

“Wha’d’ya mean ‘he’s gone’?” Bobby asked, cleaning his oil-black dirty hands. “He could barely move to go to the bath room by himself… he can’t be gone.”

If at all possible, Sam’s face lost even more of its color. He’d been out of his mind thinking that Dean had finally had enough and left him. But, what if Bobby was right, what if Dean’s vanishing act hadn’t been voluntary?

“Dean’s not in his room,” Sam said, this time in realization that something terrible had surely happen. “I looked everywhere in the house, Bobby… do you think something came here and took him?”

"This is my house you're talking about, boy! Not the grocery store down the street," Bobby was quick to reply, the sharp words doing more to assure Sam than a comforting hand on his shoulder ever would. If there was one thing that they could be sure of was that nothing evil could get inside Bobby's house without serious repercussions. "Did you search everywhere in the house?"

Sam nodded, his head bouncing emphatically like a bobble-head.

Bobby took off his cap and scrubbed his hair. The amount of white that he had collected ever since reconnecting with the adult versions of these kids had been ridiculously enormous. He watched as Sam absentmindedly nibbled his fingernail, a gesture Bobby was sure he had picked up from Dean when he was a kid.

"You know," Bobby started, his gaze taking on a far away look. "There was this time when your father dropped both of you here with me on his way to a hunt. That one time, your brother was sulking particularly hard about John not taking him along, so, no sooner I turned my back and that little brat disappeared on me for a whole day. I nearly went insane with worry, thinking that he'd took off after your dad anyway."

Sam dropped his nail biting and scrunched his nose. "I don't remember that."

"No, you wouldn't. You had just started learning how to read. Spent the whole time glued to my books, completely mesmerized. We had to drag you kicking and screaming just for meals."

"And Dean? He really went after dad?"

"Nah... brat wouldn't leave you behind for nothing in this world," Bobby said, his voice serious enough to make Sam understand that that was as much true then as it was now. "Found him by the river, up in a tree, sulking like a little girl," he said with a snort. At the time, Bobby had not found the situation funny at all; feelings of worry about something happening to the boy on his watch competing with the dreadful knowledge that he would have to call John and tell him he'd lost his son.

"By the river?" Sam confirmed, feet eager to run and see if Dean was really there.

"Yeah... just follow the path and you'll see it for sure," Bobby pointed. "I'll go check the yard. And if I find him fiddling with that car of his or any other, I'll be the one sending him to the hospital this time."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

On a second thought, he probably should've left a note explaining to Sam and Bobby where he was. Dean looked at his fingertips, peeking from a cloud of hard white and closed his eyes. Yeah! A note...

Now, without a phone and too far away to go back and at least warn them, Dean felt a pang of guilt at the worry that he knew he would undoubtedly cause the two men.

Truthfully, he had only gone as far as the stream that ran behind Bobby's property, but the small walk had left Dean exhausted and shaky. Pale and sweating, he just managed to lower himself to sit and lean back against the chopped remains of a long dead tree.

Something, he just needed something –anything- but the stifling bedroom where he’d been stuck ever since getting out of the hospital. A small change was all he wanted, a break from the feelings of curiosity and worry that had been slowly suffocating him at the house.

Sam and Bobby meant well, Dean knew that; knew that their actions were nothing but a natural reaction to all that had happened, knew that no matter how curious, neither would ever question him about what had happen, but still… it felt like a vise, griping his head and squeezing tighter and tighter.

The sound of water had attracted him there. It had always attracted him. Water, always free flowing, knowing no bounds or restrictions.

Unstoppable.

Memoryless.

Always changing, always remaining the same, like Missouri had told him.

Water, the opposite of fire.

Lucifer’s mind had been made of fire. Fire and light and despite both things being associated with warmth, there had been neither there. It had only been a small glimpse, and still Dean could feel himself chilling from the memory alone.

No matter what Castiel told him, no matter what reason told him, Dean remembered. He remembered that he had spent forty years in Hell to learn how to defeat Lucifer and that the only way to do it had been to bring his own personal Hell on Earth. Seeing Sam die by his own hand; feeling the blade as it entered that Sam-like child and watch his eyelids close to hide the look of betrayal.

Every time Sam entered the room to offer him food, or a drink, or a change of clothes or a trip to the bathroom, it was that little kid that Dean was looking at again; those innocent and trusting eyes that he saw and Dean could not bear to look at them.

If given the chance to forget only one set of memories, Dean wasn’t sure which he would pick: the forty years of torture or the forty seconds of Hell.

He closed his eyes and looked up, to a sun that was as it was supposed to be, bright and warm and let its light color his face and chase away the chill inside.

“Does it hurt?” A male voice that hadn’t quite yet hit puberty, asked, startling Dean from his sunbathing.

“What?” He asked, looking for the source of the voice. Dean could’ve sworn that he was alone in here as he could possibly be. Bobby’s place wasn’t exactly known for its proximity to civilization, something that not only suited the hunters but was actually cultivated by them. And yet, there it was in front of him, a boy no more than twelve.

Honey blond hair tucked behind a baseball cap, upwards curls framing the hat like tiny golden clasps. The team blue jersey that he was wearing didn’t match the team on the cap. Dean didn’t put much mind to sports, but he was pretty sure it didn’t even match the game.

“Your broken hands… does it hurt?”

Dean looked at the white casts covering both his hands from elbow to middle hand. After he’d woken up in the hospital, disoriented and mind fuzzy with painkillers, Dean believed that he couldn’t move any of his fingers. For a couple of terrifying hours, he was sure that he would have to live the rest of his life without use of his hands. Now, supported by the plaster wrappings, he could move most of his fingers and had regained feeling on all of them. He guessed he should be grateful for that too.

“Only when I scratch my nose,” he answered the kid.

The boy looked in confusion from the arm casts to Dean’s nose, measuring the distance and not quite getting how one could be related to the other.

The kid turned clear green eyes on him, looking for an explanation. Dean was struck by the familiarity in that look. Sam used to look at him like that, searching for answers that he was always sure his big brother would have.

Dean lifted one hand and, adding an extra clumsiness to his already clumsy gestures, pretended to bump his nose with the double sized appendice.

The boy giggled, an honest sound that sounded to Dean as fresh as the water running in the river behind them.

"You here alone?" Dean eventually asked. If he remembered right, there was a public camp ground about a mile from there, but still, that was a long way for a kid that young to be walking alone. Specially one prone to talk so openly with total strangers. "Won't your parents worry?"

The kid shrugged, like he knew that parents would always worry, no matter what he did. "I'm with my brother," he said, crossing his legs at the knees and allowing himself to crash graciously on the soft ground. It was a practiced move born both of natural agility and young bones.

Dean looked around again. Other than a pair of red-throated ducks playing in the water and the constant sound of a passing train, the place was deserted of life. "Where is he? I can't see him."

The boy pointed to beyond the place where the ducks were smoothing their feathers with their orange beaks, across the river's waters, where the woods got deeper. "Just over there... he likes to play hide and seek."

"He your big brother or little brother?"

The boy pondered the question, like it wasn't one with a simple answer.

"Both, I suppose," he finally answered.

Apparently not.

"He can't be both," Dean returned, looking at the kid, trying to figure if he was pulling his leg.

"I was born first, so that makes him the little brother," the kid explained with as much seriousness as a Harvard teacher lecturing on quantum physics. "But he's grown taller than me, so that makes him my big brother too."

Dean let out a laugh, the sound so foreign to his own ears, along with the feel of the muscles surrounding his mouth as they pulled to a wide smile. God, he couldn't even remember ever laughing that hard. It was the kind that started so deep in your belly that you had to bend backwards to allow it to fully exit. It felt good.

"Guess there's no arguing that," Dean agreed, wiping tears of joy from his eyes with a shrug of his shoulder. Dean Winchester was not a guy who cried over anything and everything, so this - this he was blaming on the meds.

At least, they were tears of laughter, this time around.

"I got one of those too," he eventually told the kid. "A big little brother."

The kid's eyes grew round, his turn to search around. "Wow... he must be a giant! Is he here too?"

Dean shook his head. He'd come here to be alone. The kid didn't need to know that.

"You should be with him, you know. Little brothers worry too," the kid said, eyes a darker green as he looked ahead, in to the water.

"What?" Dean wasn't sure he'd heard it right. It seemed such a grown up thing to say.

The kid shrugged, suddenly back to his twelve year old self. "Well, at least that's what my brother keeps on telling to me."

"Sounds like a smart kid."

The kid shrugged again, a repetitive gesture that he seemed to favor.

"He is," he agreed nonetheless. "He just messed up big time a while ago and doesn't want to admit that it was all really his fault," the kid explained, sneakered feet digging small rocks from the loose soil and moving them around like little chess pieces. "Dad says we have to be patient with him and give him the time and support he needs to understand."

Dean looked hard at the kid. Such a solemn way of telling that his brother had probably broken a window or something. Were kids really that dramatic these days? He decided to play along, give the kid the importance that he was giving to his brother's mistake.

Who ever this father was, he should probably pay more attention to where his kids were, instead of playing deep psycho-nonsense on young kids. The river wasn't particularly dangerous this time of the year, but still... Maybe he should take the kids to the camp site himself, make sure that they got there ok, even if the prospect of a two mile walk to the camp and back was something that he knew was way out of his league at the moment. Maybe he could talk the kid in to going to Bobby's and drive from there...

"I'm sure he'll get it eventually," Dean said with a smile that was meant to be more supportive rather than mocking. "Are you sure your folks aren't worried about you and your brother being all by yourselves this far out?"

The kid shrugged again. "They always worry. But me and my brother, we can take care of ourselves."

Dean knew the feeling. Just him and Sam, two against the world and some days, when they were younger, that was all that they needed. But then Sam had needed more than that, had needed a 'normal' life and then it was just Dean and his broken father. And then it had been just Dean.

It had taken them both so long to get that feeling back, the feeling that they were brothers and that they could trust each other with everything, hang together through the thick and thin, battle the demons of the world and each other’s.

And then fate, destiny, just _fucking bad-luck_, had intervened and they were back to where they had started. Apart, unable to look each other in the eye, hurting and licking their wounds when the other couldn't see. Dean wanted that feeling of security, of family back.

"Sometimes that’s all that's needed," Dean said to the kid, wondering why he was having such a conversation with a stranger, a _child_ stranger, for that matter.

But the kid nodded, like that had been his point all along and it was Dean who was just slow on the uptake. "Little brothers sometimes need to be reminded of that, no matter how big they grow or how much they want to take care of their big brothers. Your job is never really done, is it?"

Dean knew he was staring, but he could not help it. It wasn't like he had many conversations with twelve year olds, but this boy was hitting levels of strange that he wasn't sure were that normal.

And then, on top of that, there was that sense of familiarity, that odd feeling that he knew the kid from somewhere. Maybe he was the son of someone they had helped before, some hunt that had slipped his memory.

Dean suddenly realized that, for all the time that they'd been talking, he still didn't know the kid's name.

"I'm Michael, by the way," the kid announced out of the blue, like his thoughts had been following the same line as Dean's. "But all of my friends call me Mike."

"And what should I call you?" Dean asked, a growing suspicion inside of him getting larger and larger with each new word out of the kid's -Michael's- mouth.

Michael got up from the ground, dusting his jeans with one hand while he offered the other to Dean. "You can call me brother," he said, looking the older man in the eyes. Suddenly, the kid’s eyes looked so much older than twelve years, older than anything Dean had ever seen before. Timeless. "It was a pleasure to have met you, Dean."

Dean didn't have time to take the kid's hand and shake it properly, or feel surprised that Mike knew his name even though the hunter had never introduced himself. He could hear the sound of feet running up the path and the strong sense of family and love that he'd learned to associate with Sam hit him before his brother was visible.

"Who were you talking too?" Sam asked as soon as he could see Dean, relief filling every inch of his face. His voice, however, was laced with unspoken betrayal and accusation. Dean was speaking, just not with him.

Dean looked around. The kid was gone, the ground undisturbed like there never had been a second person in there.

"An old friend, I guess." _Another one that had come to say goodbye._

There was only one path to and from that little pocket between vegetation and the river, and Sam knew that he hadn't seen anyone around there. He looked at his brother, taking in the unlaced boots, the barely zipped jeans and the unbuttoned shirt that he had hastily thrown over his shoulders. It was hard to tell how much of all of this was just the normal weirdness of their lives and how much was a sign that Dean just wasn't well enough for a stroll in the woods.

"We were worried sick about you, you shouldn't even be out of bed," he ended up saying, his voice taking on a scolding tone that he hadn't really planned for.

"Sorry about that," Dean said, sounding honestly chastised about it. "I just needed some air."

"You're talking again." It sounded like such an obvious a thing to be pointing out, but Sam had been waiting too long to hear his brother's voice, waited too long to see some return to normalcy that he couldn't let the fact go unmentioned.

"Yeah..." Dean scratched his short hair, a slight blush creeping up his neck. "...sorry about that too. Didn't meant to go all brooding and moody on you guys."

"Stop saying you're sorry," Sam said, his voice defeated, pleading. With a sigh he sat, unknowingly taking the same place Michael had just vacated. Instead of the lithe grace of a twelve year old, his landing looked a lot harder, with inertia enough to punch through a wall, rather than a simple graceful action of seating down. He gently nudged Dean's shoulder, his voice softening but weighted and edged with the sadness he was attempting to hide, "You have nothing to be sorry for."

Dean' shoulders sagged under the weight of his brother’ sorrow. As it had been for all of their lives, he would do anything to make that tone, that feeling go away. He just wasn't sure if he still had what it took.

But he had to try, "Sam... I-"

"Look, I get it," Sam cut ahead. "I get it that you're disgusted with what I did, that you can barely stand having me around after what happen... I mean, I can barely stand myself," he said with a dry chuckle. "But don't risk your health because of that, because of me, ok man? Just... just tell me and I'll go, I'll get out of your hair and you can stay quiet and safe with Bobby and then you can fin-"

"What the hell are you yapping about?" Dean asked, genuinely surprised by Sam's outburst. Had his brother really been living under the assumption that Dean was mad at him for what had happen? "I didn't came here to be away from you," he said. God, nothing could be farther away from the truth than that. He'd come here to think about what Castiel had said, to find the courage to pull his head out of his own ass, not to escape his brother's presence.

"Then why? Why haven't you said a word to me ever since you woke up? Why are you here all alone, talking to thin air instead?" _Why wont you talk to me?_

The unspoken words bit harder than the shouted questions. His brother was scared, hurting and part of it was the distance that Dean had unwittingly created between them. The distance that the secrets between the two of them had started to create a long time ago.

"Castiel came to say goodbye," Dean offered.

Sam bent his knees and circled his arms around his bony legs. He looked as far from his twenty-five, six feet four self as he could be.

"Oh," he let out, caught off guard by the mention of the angel that he had never met. Somehow, that fact saddened him, made him feel even more unworthy of the attentions of a heavenly creature. "You two grew pretty close." _While I was out, fucking things up with Ruby_.

"Sam, there's no point in thinking like that. What Ruby did was..." Dean stopped himself. Sam was looking at him in a funny way and for a moment Dean thought that his brother was going to storm away like he had done in the motel when Dean had slipped up, revealing his mind-reading abilities. He relaxed when Sam's confusion was replaced by quiet understanding.

"I'd forgotten you could do that," Sam said with a humorless smile. "I'm gonna have to be more careful about the secrets I keep from you from now on," he added in a failed joke.

The words felt like a slap in the face, even though Dean knew that was not Sam's intention. "Look, there are some things about me, about us that I never got to tel-"

"You don't have to tell me anything," Sam cut through. After what he had done, Sam felt he couldn't be trusted with anything bigger than a rubber band. It was shaping up to be pretty obvious that there was something more to his brother than what the eye could see, but it wasn’t Sam’s place to know it. He was probably the last person on Earth that deserved to know it.

"No!" Dean said without bite. "Look, Sam, secrets and us not talking to one another is what started this mess in the first place. I'm not going to make that mistake again," Dean pressed on despite Sam's wide, teary eyes. "I'm not letting us fall for that mistake again."

Sam looked down. There was a family of ants, running around his shoes, carrying something on their backs, something unidentifiable to him, but probably of the utmost importance to those ants.

He took in a shuddering breath.

"I fucked up, Dean," the younger Winchester confessed, the words feeling like razor blades in his mouth but doing wonders for the weight in his chest. "I fucked up so bad and I don't know how, but you made it all better, made it all go away like you always did when we were kids, only this time, this time the shadow of what could have been is just too fucking big for me to forget and let go."

Dean fought the urge to get up and comfort his brother. Sam was right, this was too big to just let it go. "You're right, you did fuck up."

Sam looked up, red eyes swimming with fresh tears. He looked surprised and hurt before a smile crept up his face.

"What?" Dean asked. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy the shy smile that seemed to have been forever lost from his brother's face, but Sam had that look about him, the one in which he's just gotten a joke that Dean hadn't.

"Nothing," Sam said, using his shirt’ sleeves to clean his face, like he did ever since he was a little kid. "It's just that this was when you were suppose to tell me something along the lines of _it wasn't your fault_, that _you did the best you could_, or my favorite, _we can't save them all_," Sam counted the phrases out of his fingers. He'd really had heard them all before, and he couldn't thank his brother enough for not taking the easy way out and brushing this under the proverbial carpet.

"Screw that!" Dean echoed his brother's thoughts. "You're big enough to deal with the consequences of your actions and, hopefully, learn from them."

Sam turned serious, avoiding Dean's gaze. Learning from his mistakes would be the easy part, if he could just get over the consequences that might have been. If it weren't for Dean...

"No... I wasn't alone in there Sam," Dean corrected him. "It sucked that you didn't believe me when I warned you about Ruby and it was dumb to let yourself be blinded by revenge like that, but I. Was. Not. Alone. In. There. Sam... if it weren't for you, for your strength and presence, I never could've... what I had to..."

Dean couldn't go any further. He looked down, willing the images of little Sam dead in his arms to go away. Big Sam's hands filled his field of vision, solid against his shoulders.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry for not listening to you, for... for everything," Sam said, leaning his head to touch Dean's bowed head. _No matter what happened, no matter what happens from now on, I'm just glad that I have you, and I just want you to know that you have me_, Sam thought, knowing that Dean would get both the silent words and the feeling behind them better than anything that he could've said.

Dean let that feeling wash over him, clear away everything else. "We can't let this thing define us, Sam, we can't let this change who we are," he said to Sam shoulder, not trusting himself to look any higher and risk meeting Sam's eyes. "We were just pawns, fucking pawns in a game that started way before we were even born, a game that will go on for a long time after we're gone and turned to dust."

Sam nodded against his brother's head, not wanting to let go. It sounded so easy when Dean said it like that. Just... let go. "My powers are gone, you know?"

Dean nodded. Even now he could feel his brother as he had always was supposed to be. Untainted, generous and good. "You get a fresh start Sammy. A chance to do things your way, with no demon plans, with no Heaven or Hell interfering in our lives."

Sam closed his eyes. So easy... "I can feel them, Dean... I can feel their blood in my hands, I can see every single face before I used my powers to destroy them. How do I move on... how do I live with that?"

Dean shuddered, Sam's words and tone so similar to Lucifer's when he had told how Sam had tried to kill himself when Dean was gone. Lies... Dean had to remind himself that those were all lies. His brother was stronger than the version that Lucifer had given him.

"One day at a time, Sammy," Dean said, finally lifting his head to face Sam. "You live one day at a time, you try your best each time and if it ever gets too hard, if you ever feel like you can't take another breath, you trust in me and Bobby to have your back."

Sam opened his eyes, nothing ahead of him but the green of Dean's eyes. They offered sanctuary, safety, home.

"When did you ever turn in to such a girl?" Sam joked half-heartedly. _I'm here too, you know. I've got your back whenever you need me too,_ he offered silently.

Dean chuckled, finally releasing Sam from his gaze. "Yeah... I'm starting to learn that little brothers can be big too."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

It was getting late and by the second time that Bobby had phoned Sam’s cell to tell them to get their bony asses back, neither brother could really ignore him much longer. But neither was really willing to leave their pocket of safety just yet.

"Hey, do you remember this?" Dean asked as he carefully picked up a pebble between two fingers and tossed in to the water, satisfied look on his face as he watched it skip the surface three times before sinking.

Sam chuckled and Dean was happy to realize that the sound had none of the eerie effects that Lucifer’s chuckle had stirred in him. It was a clean sound, a happy sound, a memory of safer times and Dean rejoiced in it.

“Yeah,” Sam said, picking a pebble of his own and sending it across the still waters. “I asked you what you were doing and you said you were hunting water pixies,” he added with a smile, watching as his pebbled touched the blue water four times before disappearing, caterpillar-like trails spreading out long before the rock hit the bottom of the river. “I thought you were pulling my leg.”

It was Dean’s turn to smile and throw another pebble. There was no way his younger brother was getting away with a bigger score on water-skips. Cast or no cast.

“I wasn’t,” Dean said, slightly annoyed as he watched his rock since after only two skips. “Sneaky bastards had stolen my baseball card.”

“Yeah, I figured you were serious about it a few years later,” Sam voiced, facing the river now but lost in the images of another river, another Sam and another Dean. “I was confused all summer of why you wouldn’t step in to those waters… why you wouldn’t let me in either. It was a damn hot summer, that one.”

Dean was looking at the water too, his and Sam’s shoulders almost touching, a forgotten rock in his fingers as he remembered the rare days when they got to be like every other kid and spent whole days just playing in the warm sun and cooling themselves in the fresh water. “No pixies here,” he said after a while, challenging look in his eyes, pebble tossed back to the ground.

Sam tore his eyes from the water and faced his brother. “Are you serious? This river looks like it can barely reach eighty on a hot day!”

But Dean wasn’t even paying attention to Sam’s words. He had already kicked away the boots that he had never bothered to string up, tossed away the baggy shirt that had been about the only thing that he had managed to find that could actually allow his casted wrists to pass and was in the process of pulling his jeans and shorts down using only his thumbs.

“You're serious about this,” Sam stated, unable to keep the smile off his face at seeing Dean’s face glow with a child like amusement. Before he could even warn Dean about not getting his casts and bandages wet, Sam watched as his brother tested the water temperature with one toe, hiding the shudder at the temperature. The hesitancy passed and suddenly jumped in. “Dean!”

Five seconds later, a wet, grinning head popped out of the water. “Come on in, you pussy. T’water’s fine!”

It really wasn’t that he believed Dean’s report of the water’s temperature. It was the sudden lightness and freedom of the action that suddenly struck Sam. This was who they were, this was what they had in common, this was what would never change.

Sam made short work of stripping naked and joined Dean in the water, walking, rather than jumping like his out-of-mind brother had done.

“Shit!” Sam yelped, as the water hit more sensitive areas. "Dean.. Th.. This is freezing!"

“Such a baby,” Dean mocked. Goosebumps covered his half submerged arms, the weight of the casts making it harder to float more freely. Still, he had a cheek-to-cheek smile on his face. “Think warm thoughts… maybe that will keep little Sammy from disappearing all together,” he added with a wink before tossing a arm full of freezing water on his brother.

Sam gasped, eyes like daggers watching his grinning, evil brother. The war was on!

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

On the other shore, two little kids watched. Hand in hand, one blond the other brunet. One light and one dark. They were quietly watching the brothers’ antics in the water, smiling as they identified the same brotherly love that bonded them too. They were still smiling when the setting sunlight cut though the treetops and shone on them. When the leaves shifted again, they were gone.  
 

The end


End file.
